[nicbou]

Despite all the praise it got, I really struggled with that book. I hated it so much that I had to check if I didn't pick the wrong book by accident. I found that it's a very polarising book. It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.

There were a few insightful passages, but most of the book was pretentious rambling. It was difficult to understand what the author was even trying to say, with his head so far up his butt. It has a promising beginning, but becomes increasingly dense and confusing.

Quality is the ability of a thing to do its job. Chasing the definition of that word doesn't warrant a spiral into insanity.

[growlist]

> It's life-changing for some, and garbage for others.

I feel this way about Catcher in the Rye. My English teacher recommended it to me obviously on the basis that I was an angsty teenager that would identify with Holden Caulfield. But what a pile of crap it is. I still want back the hours I wasted on reading that stupid boring book.

[clickok]

It's a loathsome book for some people, even angsty teenagers, because not all of them are angsty for the same reasons.

I didn't enjoy it either when I was reading it, but later appreciated that it depicted a certain kind of angst— that of someone leaving childhood for adulthood, feeling anxious and threatened by this shift, and wishing to just remain as the most adult-like child (the "catcher in the rye" that gives the book its title) instead of having to go through that awkward period of being the most childlike adult.

Under that reading, it's much less irritating, because Holden isn't supposed to be valorized, just understood.

[randomstring]

I loved Salinger's books when I was a teenager in the 80s. I just don't think his work is relevant today. The major themes are about how everyone else is a conformist and a phony. Both ideas have been turned inside out since Salinger wrote his books. What does being a "phony" mean if you're a YouTube star or say the President of the United States?

[52-6F-62]

That's a weird recommendation. I think you might have viewed it differently as a bit of a retrospective or perspective piece.

I can't possibly so how the teacher thought suggesting that book to an angsty teen to be a good idea. That's the time kids need to have their world opened, not their angst re-affirmed. Very strange.

[growlist]

Thing is I was already reading some pretty bleak stuff at the time, e.g. Brave New World and 1984, and as you can probably imagine the trials of a mopey teenager didn't really impress much when put up against poor Winston and Room 101 etc.

[52-6F-62]

Haha fair enough

[brandall10]

This was required reading in a highschool English class. I really enjoyed it then.

Tried to read it again in my early 30s and stopped about 20 pages in, just thought it was terrible.

[boris]

I found it to be an "atmospheric" (for the lack of a better word) book -- you understand by feeling as much as by, well, direct understanding. Kind of like Master and Margarita (which some people also find pedestrian).

[donquichotte]

I had a similar experience.

Reading secondary literature gave me some context about Pirsig's own mental illness and his struggles overcoming his son's death, but in the end I was still disappointed.

Edit: Also, it's not about motorcycles at all. If you are interested in motorcycle travel, read Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels instead.

[randcraw]

I really wanted to like JT. But Simon is a poor writer who wanders as much on the page as he did on his bike. An an author he's no comparison with Pirsig who had much more to say than merely, "I went somewhere and saw something."

Better books on motorcycling are "Long Way Round" by McGregor and Boorman or anything by Peter Egan.

Pirsig's ZatAoMM is my all-time favorite book, though I didn't finish it at first reading. The trick before reading it is not to put the book into a cubbyhole of personal preexisting expectations. It's not a travel book. It's a personal journey of discovery that just happens to be on a motorcycle. Essentially, Pirsig's bike trip is a metaphor to revisit his fragmented past and forgotten identity through the lens of a curious mind. It's a personal quest to know who he is (and was) and what in life has value that lasts.

For me, the book was transcendent.

[nicbou]

I read Jupiter's Travels right after. It's indeed a much better book about motorcycle travel. It's a very accurate depiction of what it's like to travel on a motorcycle. It still blows my mind that someone achieved this before ATMs, hotel booking sites and fuel injection.

[rograndom]

I had read it when I was younger and thought much of the same thing. Years later someone taught me about mindfulness in a completely different context and after applying that thinking to other aspects of my life I picked that book up again. I was able to appreciate it much more the second time.

[echlebek]

I came to the conclusion that the book is actually about mental illness, whether intentional or otherwise.

[lambdatronics]

The first time I tried to read it, I got frustrated with his style and quit -- I had been skimming over the story parts to get to the philosophy, and it was exhausting. I liked it better the second time when I wasn't as rushed.

For me the takeaways were: 1. Getting into a state of 'flow' is the ideal way to work. 2. Being dependent on technology one doesn't understand (& hence on people who do understand it) is an unpleasant fact of modern life. 3. Our culture still hasn't shaken the tendency to denigrate pleasure, and the subjective in general.

[friendlybus]

Quality is ranking things or people by their properties. Things that suck at their job can still be ranked.

You have to balance the idea and quantity of a piece to describe it's properties. Then you can rank it into a hierarchy. The UK runs on this principle of reception and qualitative judgement.

Turning the brain off with "peace of mind" is necessary, can't be thinking up new ideas and directing thoughts when you are in a state of reception, nor can you be excessively self-aware of your own being.

I haven't read Zen, it seems boring to be in that state of reception all the time, to me.

[gfody]

> Quality is the ability of a thing to do its job.

He was an English teacher trying to judge the quality of rhetoric though, which doesn’t have a job other than to be quality.

[chimprich]

I thought it worked as a story, but the philosophical insights of it were either junk or too subtle for me to understand.

[noufalibrahim]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I have similar sentiments about Cohelo's Alchemist and even Ayn Rands fountainhead (didn't read the second book).