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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, and: Truck: On Rebuilding a Worn-out Pickup, and Other Post-technological Adventures by John Jerome (review)

1978; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1978.a892100

1097-3729

John M. Staudenmaier,

Art, Technology, and Culture

TECHNOLOGY ANI) CULTURE Book Reviews 257 intervention, the more difficult to document all of its effects. But one would assume that some effects could be reliably noted. It seems that the only effects measured in the papers in these volumes are selfreports of satisfaction. Although there has been development of methods and measures for evaluating project research, one would never know it by these volumes. If OD is to be a science rather than only an art or a religion, it will have to pay more attention to research design and measurement. Gerrit Wolf* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. By Robert M. Pirsig. New York: Bantam Books, 1976. Pp. 406. $2.50 (paperbound). Truck: On Rebuilding a Worn-out Pickup, and Other Post-technological Adventures. By John Terome. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977. Pp. 145. $6.95. If you have not read Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle Maintenance in the four years since it appeared, it might be because the title seemed flippant. It misleads and does not prepare the reader for the philo­ sophical subtlety and human passion of the book. Pirsig’s intent is to conduct a “Chautauqua,” the 19th-century traveling series of “popu­ lar talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer” (p. 7). The focus of these musings is the tension Pirsig senses in a certain contemporary fear of technology: “I just think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital com­ puter or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha—which is to demean oneself. That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua” (p. 18). Pirsig has brilliantly executed a daring literary conception. He places the chautauqua—a highly sophisticated philosophical inquiry into the significance of the human-technology interface—in the con­ text of a journey which occurs on three levels at once. The firstjour­ ney is the obvious, but marvelously perceptive, trek of a father and his son by motorcycle across the heartland of America from Minneapolis, over the Rockies, to the Pacific coast. The second, the journey of father and son toward mutual intimacy, is exquisite in its tenderness and angers, its terrors and small delights, and stunning in its final resolution. The third journey is the author’s reentry into his own *Dr. Wolf, of the College of Industrial Management at Georgia Tech, is a social psychologist who has published widely in the fields of organizational communication and decision making. 258 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE scarred past, a repenetration of the madness caused by his first in­ tellectual encounter with the implications of human-technological tension. The philosophical discussion is hard going. It is reminiscent of Plato’s dialogues not only in its difficulty but also because, like Plato, it deals with the epistemological questions of the formal structure of conflicting systems of consciousness. Pirsig asks whether there is a genuinely meaningful bridge between the “classical” (i.e., rationalscientific ) and the “romantic” (poetic-intuitive) modes. He seeks, by pursuing the meaning of what people in both domains recognize as “quality,” for a common intelligible terrain. The book is most successful, perhaps, because it is impossible to extricate the fragile father-and-son relationship from the thread of the father’s probing the link between the technological and nontechnological worlds. This is a very Greek book. We always face the issue of hubris. Is it self-destructive arrogance to seek entrance into the mysteries of our universe? Will the fragile relationship of a father with his son and with his own mind bear the weight? That is the question posed, not only by the explicit content of the narrator’s thoughts, but also by weaving philosophical discourse inseparably into a life story. However, even if one does not follow the entire discussion, there are patches of brilliance that are memorable and very helpful. No student of technological innovation should miss the...