The Book I Read: On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings by Robert M. Pirsig and Wendy K. Pirsig

I was very excited when I happened upon (completely by accident--I was looking for something else) this book on the public library's website. I'd read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance several times, and Lila once. I'd also nibbled at Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Ron Di Santo & Tom Steele...though I have to admit that I wasn't man enough to read the whole thing. But I think I've established my street cred here: I loved Robert Pirsig dearly. So finding out that there was a new Pirsig book excited me greatly.

I put in a request for the it, got it almost immediately (not a good sign for a brand new book), and commenced to reading it.

Hmmm. Not exactly the most compelling material. First off, there was a long Preface ("Bob's Quest") by Wendy Pirsig. And I'm sure that Wendy is a lovely human being...but she is not a great writer. Despite my great interest in the subject matter, I found the Preface exceedingly tedious, and it took me a lot longer to work through it than I would have believed possible. But after that it was all new Pirsig, right? 135 pages of text!

Well...not really. For one thing, there were a lot of pictures of Bob's tools. Interesting, yes...but that's not what I was looking for. And then it became obvious that a lot of the written material was stuff taken from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. In fact, there were only about 62 pages of "new" material. And those pages were not very full. In fact, I'd guess that if you boiled it all down to a normal sized book--this one is only ‎ 5.5 x 8.25 inches, about the size of a paperback book; and the spacing is generous; and the margins are wide; and the font is not small--that you'd have maybe 25 pages. It's stuff from letters and lectures, for the most part.

But it's worse than that. The material here is so tedious and repetitive that despite my great love for Pirsig, I was ready to quit by the time I finally dragged myself to page 102. I felt like I was reading the same five lines over and over again. In fact, the only reason that I finished the book was because I was stuck in the car waiting for my son to get off work and I'd forgotten to bring my Nicholas Nickleby along.

And get this: the list price for this book is $26.99. 

If you love Robert M. Pirsig, you do not want to buy this book. In fact, I feel ripped off, and I didn't pay a cent to read it. It's just shit, really.

Re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again instead. You'll be a lot happier than I am right now.