Word: pirsig
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...Robert Pirsig's new book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, will please readers who enjoy this genre. However, those that expect ideas to be developed rigorously will not be satisfied by Pirsig's latest philosophical ramblings...
LILA by Robert M. Pirsig; Bantam; 409 pages...
...been 17 years since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance went vroom-vroom into bookstores, and it has not stopped selling since. Millions of readers have followed Phaedrus, Robert M. Pirsig's enigmatic narrator-hero, on his physical journey through the American West and his inner trip toward a mystical understanding of the universe. Although it appeared in 1974, Zen was and remains one of the most impressive literary expressions of the countercultural...
Phaedrus is back in Lila, Pirsig's second book, this time alone on a boat, wending his way leisurely down a water path that originated in Lake Superior and may bring him to Florida or even Mexico. He had hoped that all this free, undisturbed time would allow him to sort through the thousands of note cards he has assembled for his next book, tentatively titled Metaphysics of Quality or Metaphysics of Value. And this book, as Phaedrus describes it, sounds interesting: an attempt to find some middle path between scientists and mystics, between those who swear by facts alone...
Such passages will probably not bother members of the Pirsig cult. Gurus are supposed to talk funny and are always deeper than they seem. But the uninitiated may have a hard time making much sense out of Phaedrus' attempt "to go all the way back to fundamental meanings of what is meant by morality." At moments like this, Phaedrus resembles someone hacking away at a flat rock and wondering if he will come up with the wheel...