3 1/2 Lessons from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Learning from a masterpiece that has changed many lives (including mine)

One summer, when I was a young teenager, my dad gave me two books: Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. 

“These two books are why I studied philosophy,” he told me. “You might like them.”

Or perhaps he said nothing like that at all. I’ve never had a memory that can hold conversations. Friends will relate back to me things I’ve said previously, advice I’ve given, jokes or stories I’ve shared. It’s as if it all came from a different person.

This condition of recurring amnesia, or identity loss, was, for much more brutal reasons—electroshock therapy—familiar to Pirsig, whose story parallels that of the narrator of ZAMM. Among other things, the novel is the story of a man in search of himself.

In any case, while I don’t recall the words my father used when he gave me the books, I came away understanding that these novels were not so much recommended as bestowed. They were imparted. And so I read them with attention. 

That summer, sometime around age 13 or 14, because of these two books, my mind changed. It is difficult to convey the substance of the change that took place; but I remember a feeling in my body like revelation. At a certain point in each book, I felt a wash of understanding, a tingly sensation all over my skin, and a quivering excitement. What was conveyed in that moment was, I suppose, the assurance that there was more to existence than what the senses revealed; and, more importantly, that I was not alone in having this belief: that others also felt a layer of reality above this one: a transcendent source of meaning that infuses our world. 

For over two decades, perhaps a quarter of a century, I never touched the books again. Given the fuzziness of my memory, I forgot their details, but remembered vividly the experience of going through them. Even though they gave me as much as any non-sacred book has ever done, I suspected that to read them again would be to spoil the magic. I didn’t want to see how the trick was done. 

Now, a father of three, I am revisiting these books. I know that as a man, I am unlikely to feel that revelatory rush I did the first time. I am content knowing that. But what I can do is to analyze the effects, to peel back the covering on the mechanisms that produced the wonders. The time in life has come where I do want to see how the trick was done. How can an author put together 161,000 words that, when read in order, with attention, transform not one mind, but more than 5 million of them?

I feel one of my tasks in life is to understand what makes a fantastically powerful piece of creativity—visual, verbal, musical—work. And so over the coming weeks, I’ll share my observations on ZAMM as I re-read the book that changed me.

To make it useful, I’ll structure these notes in the form of lessons.  

Lesson 1: The More Abstract Your Subject, the More Motor Oil You Need 

From the first moments of ZAMM, you are immersed in a sensory world. You feel the cool air drifting from the “duck sloughs” by the side of the highway in Northern Minnesota. You see the watch on the narrator’s wrist. You hear his voice straining to be heard over the roar of the engine. 

These are the opening lines:

“I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid. When it’s this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, I’m wondering what it’s going to be like in the afternoon.”

Where is he? Whither is he going?

And suddenly you’re along for the ride.

The first abstract reflection—the first philosophical moment—does not come for another two pages, when the narrator observes:

“I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on [to the charm of the backroads]. We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. … It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

This careful patterning of thought and matter, of reflection and sensation, of emotional tension and placid observation, is what allows the book to make philosophy not a topic of treatises but a lived reality. It reminds me of Dostoevsky, whose transcendent ideas come packaged in the messiest, dirtiest, bloodiest of human forms.

Ideas, like souls, need bodies.

You would not enjoy the ideas of the book without the metal and oil. The long passages of narration about repairing pistons hold your interest because they balance the paragraphs of reflection. 

And so in order to pursue the real object of ZAMM — how to live well — it must be tethered to a chugging, roaring, smelly motor. 

Lesson 2: Structure Gives Rhythm 

The sonata form in music is a way of structuring dramatic tension and release. The form introduces contrasting themes, wanders away from them, and then returns to them, often in some altered, triumphant version.

At a high level, a structure similar to this one underlies ZAMM.

Pirsig shows as much in the letters he wrote to his editor during the drafting of the novel. He describes a process of writing paragraphs on 3,000 four-by-six slips of paper, labeling them with thematic tags, and then weaving them together. Those labels were: “Events,” “People,” “Maintenance Broad Fabric,” “Zen Broad Fabric”, and “Heights.”

Once you hear that this is how he designed the book, you can see the way he subtly shifts between these themes from paragraph to paragraph. 

Long passages of closely observed detail about the topography and weather of the High Plains flow into introspective passages that raise questions about the narrator’s mysterious biography, which flow into minor scenes with secondary characters, and conclude with a meditation on the function of a gear assembly.

This alternation gives the book a rhythm and pace, carrying you along, preventing any one theme dominating. The contrasting paragraphs give an energy like the push and pull of an engine. All motion is a form of rhythm. Structural motion makes this intellectual book strangely hypnotic and highly readable.

It also creates opportunities for reversals and disruptions of the rhythm, which create drama, as we will now see.

Idea 3: Revelations Are Punchlines. Deliver Them Deadpan. 

The other driver of the action in ZAMM, as with a thriller (but much more subtle) is the subtle uncovering of details that add tension and drama to the story. 

In the first part of the book (the first seven chapters, roughly 90 pages), the narrator slowly uncovers, piece by piece, a series of mysteries, each of which raises questions. Every detail adds complexity, until a brief revelation, given suddenly without any fanfare, in plain prose, jolts our attention.

What’s remarkable is how Pirsig never overplays these small reveals. They often come near the end of paragraphs, as if in passing, and then the action turns away. This has the effect of seeding an unresolved desire to know that drives the action forward. 

In the first few pages he makes you ask: 

• Who is the narrator? Why does he not remember his past? 

• What is his relationship with his son, Chris? 

• What is his relationship with his friend John, and his wife Sylvia? Is there romantic and personal tension among them? 

• What is he seeking in this quest? 

Here’s an example of how he gives a revelation in answer that last question which only raises more questions. Prior to this sentence, he is reflecting on his friends’ hostile relationship to technology. Most of his observations are psychological. And then comes this bolt from the blue:

“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer 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.” 

Then, back to the marshes again. 

One of Pirsig’s way of raising questions between his revelations is through dramatic irony. He shows you that the narrator has a strangely intimate understanding of his friend John’s wife, Sylvia, introducing a question about the nature of their relationship:

“John was worried Sylvia would not be up to the discomfort of this and planned to have her fly to Billings, Montana, but Sylvia and I both talked him out of it. … And when thinking about Sylvia’s moods and feelings, I couldn’t see her complaining.” 

Here you have to ask:

Why does he know more about Sylvia than her husband does? 

1/2 Lesson: Declare Your Intentions in the Highest Terms

Near the beginning of ZAMM, soon after we join Pirsig on his ride, meet his son, and see the flocks of ducks rising over the sloughs, he drops a passage on us that answers in an unexpected fashion a question we haven’t yet asked. Why are we here? His answer conveys that this is no ordinary ride in the countryside.

“Unless you’re fond of hollering you don’t make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. On sight and sounds, on the mood of hte weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you’re in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you’re losing time. 

What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much change to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.” 

He goes on to describe this journey, his purpose in this book, as a surprising thing: a Chautauqua, or traveling tent-show intended to edify, entertain, and improve the mind of the hearer. Like his other revelations, it raises a question. How can a ride on a motorcycle be a Chautauqua? We thereby understand that this mission is not simply to take a ride, but to improve the minds of his listeners. We see here that we are on an important journey. What felt like a motorcycle travelogue suddenly turns out to be a mission on a higher purpose. Motorcycle mechanics takes on a deeper meaning.

A Few Exercises to Put Into Practice

1. Think of your writing in modules of different tone. Alternate tones to create patterns of tension and release.

2. Structure a push and pull of revelation and mystery. 

3. Give revelations, but don’t overstress them.

4. Tell your readers the higher reason for the journey they are on. 

New Things Coming 

Some major housekeeping news: I’m planning to move my email off Substack. I may keep posting occasionally here, but there are things I’d like to do with email that I can’t do in Substack. This change will likely come in July.

Why am I moving? Flexibility. And a desire to focus on building a closer relationship with a smaller audience.

One client I’ve worked with saw his open rates climb significantly after shifting to a different email provider. He’s up to 60%+ open rates, and has developed new business as a result. 

I may lose a few people in the transition, but my goal is to be more frequent and more helpful to those who do read. Clients at Alembic have said how they value my analysis of their content and how to make it succeed, and I plan to give more of it here.

Hope you’ll stay on for the ride.

Until next time, 

Ben