Lila

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A compelling and witty book with vast scope - Rated
More than enough for a lifetime's meditations...

Pirsig's book spans a phenomenal range of subject matter - biology, society, the Victorians, World War I, the hippie movement, intellectualism, celebrity culture, cities, capitalism, 'insanity', 'sanity' - and encapsulates the whole thing in a well-argued framework that shows how the otherwise vague terms of value and morals work apply to 'reality' in its broadest sense, and how the whole thing is totally relative. And it's an enlightening journey, and by no means stuffy or academic.

As a long-term student of Buddhism, the book provides a welcome and refreshing Western take on the subject (although Zen Buddhism is only a very small part of the book's scope), showing how Buddhist values are just as important in the development of Western society and thinking, albeit 'filtered out' of mainstream conscious.

I would highly recommend LILA to anyone who likes to think about what they're reading. It's not essential to read "Zen and the Arts of Motorcycle Maintenance" in advance of approaching this book, but it does give a good introduction to the concepts on show.

This is a compelling and witty book with vast scope, that celebrates the diversity of consciousness, whilst audaciously trying to capture the breadth of human achievement and thought within a framework that is more open and persuasive than anything I've seen put forward before now.

The result is a book that celebrates humanity, rather than trying to diminish its achievements, and which deserve serious consideration by those that claim to decipher 'truth' - be they philosophers, advocates for religion, anthropologists or scientists.

One of the most thought-provoking books out there - timely, and even more radical and far-reaching than Pirsig's first book in its implications for humanity.

Must read - Rated
This is absolutely brilliant.

If you like to think about life, and why things are the way they are, then this is for you. I've got a feeling it may not be a woman's book: the affective side of life is not particularly pertinent to Pirsig's analysis. But as an organised stream of intellectual investigation it is without peer - unless you include Zen and the Art... of course.

Not quite Zen but getting there - Rated
This twist on the way we see reality, thinly disguised as a journey down the Hudson River with an amoral woman (although a lot hangs on whether or not she is amoral ) is absorbing. His investigation of her is both intellectual and biological. This is told against a background of Native American culture v the European view complete with hallucinogens and teepees. It is, of course, a continuation of Pirsig's unique perspective on Quality (his capitalisation not mine) as started in "Zen and the Art".
Phaedrus rides again. While the characters are fascinating it is the narrator who really capture your interest - more hang ups than Bowie's wardrobe. His take on Quality is quirky and, while I get much of it, other chunks just don't quite hang together for me. However, there are themes and ideas that seem so blatantly right that you have to consider all his assertions for nuggets of obscure truth. I only saw the end coming 'cause I counted the pages. Wow! Is this genius or flawed-genius? It's a good read\rant anyway and prods mercilessly at the grey matter.

Phaedrus reflects some more - Rated
This book is a sequel to Pirsig's famous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, first published in 1974. Both books are technically novels; but in fact the thin story-line - the account of a journey - is the thread on which is strung a strenuous metaphysical investigation of ultimate reality. This investigation is couched in a ruminative, discursive and colloquial style which, given the difficulty of the subject matter, is easier to follow than would be a dry and austere academic presentation of the conclusions which Pirsig has reached. In Zen Pirsig managed to make this search by his central character, Phaedrus, read like a tense and rather desperate detective story, with no less than the sanity of the investigator being at stake - and Phaedrus does succumb for a while and has to spend a period in a mental hospital.

Lila again has Phaedrus as the central character, though this time he speaks in the third and not the first person singular, and he is presented as the author of the earlier book. This time he is travelling on a sailing boat instead of on a motor-cycle - and although at one point the sailing boat is used to underline the fact that he is a loner, it is not otherwise used as a trigger for an investigation into the nature of things as the motor-cycle had been used in the previous book. The tension and suspense of the first book is missing, and from that point of view Lila is less gripping than Zen was. The reason for this is not that Pirsig's narrative skills have deserted him, but that, whereas Zen had ended with Phaedrus' solution to the problem of what was the ultimate nature of reality, Lila merely works out some implications of this solution. In order to make the later book a self-contained work, the conclusions which Phaedrus had reached in the first book need to be restated. Pirsig is too much of a craftsman to do this by mere repetition of what he had said in Zen; even so, those who have read the earlier book will perhaps feel a certain sense of déja vu.

What, then, had Phaedrus discovered as the ultimate nature of reality? He had felt that the two modes of western thinking, the classical and the romantic, were both unsatisfactory. The romantic, which will not come to grips with the underlying meaning of phenomena, is basically superficial. The classical mode, with its analytical procedures, often destroys what it investigates. The romantic mode stresses the subjective impact on the observer; the classical stresses the objective nature of the things observed. Both are part of what, in Lila, Phaedrus calls the subject-object metaphysic; and the concept that the world can be understood in terms simply of subject and object has been deeply embedded in western thought ever since classical Greek philosophy. However, the pre-classical Greeks, through their concept of arete, held out the possibility of a richer understanding. Phaedrus translates arete as "Quality" (and sometimes as "Value"), and it is by Quality that the conclusions reached by the classical or the romantic processes need to be judged.

What had, in the first book, driven Phaedrus into temporary insanity was the difficulty of defining what exactly this Quality was. If you are capable of responding to Quality, you know what it is. It is what you perceive in a work of art (in the romantic mode) or in the elegance of a rational construct (in the classical mode); and where it is absent, the art or the rational construct convey a defective understanding of the world. But because (as Phaedrus believed) this Quality is pre-intellectual, it vanishes the moment you try to pin it down by definitions; and if you cannot define it, you are at the mercy of the scoffing of such as Rigel (another character in Lila).

Besides, Quality is perceived in different ways by different cultures. Is it therefore a purely relative concept? Phaedrus thinks not. In Lila he conceives it in evolutionary terms. The relativism, therefore, is not absolute: in all societies Quality is that which leads to improvement. It is therefore Dynamic (always spelt with a capital D) and not static.

Phaedrus describes evolution as going through four phases: the inorganic; the biological; the social; and the intellectual. Mankind originates at the biological level. The biological level then "invents" the social level, and it does this for the benefit of the biological level; therefore every development that leads from the lower to the higher level has Dynamic Quality, and, in that context, has Moral Quality, too. Nothing that threatens to sacrifice a higher to a lower level is moral.

At the social level new patterns or codes are developed which eventually become static. The social codes regulate the society and so protect it from slipping back to a lower level; but at the same time their rigidity is often intolerant of intellectual criticism. That intolerance is immoral when intellectual criticism is Dynamic, i.e. when it is trying to move mankind along to a higher level than the social one. Intellectual criticism is, however, degenerative and lacking in Moral Quality if, as it were, it allies with the biological level against the social level and would thereby produce a slipping back rather than a moving forward. In this connection Phaedrus has a trenchant analysis of the hippy culture of the 'seventies.

In fact, the applications of Phaedrus' rather abstract scheme constantly enliven the book. The Metaphysics of Quality is applied to such varied subjects as the work of anthropologists; sexual behaviour; the megalopolis; the free market; the cult of celebrity; the making of movies based on books; Victorian "hypocrisy"; the significance of the New Deal and of fascism; Islamic fundamentalism; cultural discrimination; the nature of mental illness and the attitudes of psychiatrists.

Surprisingly good sequal - Rated
After "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (one o/t most succesful cult books of the 70s) Pirsig presents a surprisingly good sequel which fits into the cultural frame of the nineties. Against a narrative setting of another journey, accompanied by an instabile but fascinating woman (Lila), Pirsig again ponders about Quality and the question whether Lila has any. Touching on Northern-American cultural values, mental illness and Native Indians, the "Metaphysics of Quality" of the first novel is further developed and elaborated upon by Pirsig's introduction of a new concept of a cohesion between Dynamic and Static quality. The author desribes an authentic and innovating Quality which causes life to progress within its necessary patterns of static quality such as tradition and fixed norms. If you liked the first book, make sure you read this!