Word: zens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Lila is Pirsig's first book in 17 years, and in order to appreciate it, one should have read Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. A motorcycle trip from Montana to California frames the narrator's flashbacks and philosophical musings in Zen. The narrator, Phaedrus, undertakes a psychological quest to restore the part of his personality that shock therapy obliterated. He claims that philosophizing about unresolvable issues drove him crazy...
Although Lila is not billed as a sequal to Zen, it builds upon the argument in Zen. The narrator, still Phaedrus, is a little bit older, a little bit wiser. Now he is sailing his one-person yacht down the Hudson River to New York City. He is joined by Lila, a woman he picked up in a bar one night...
...argument in Lila is more comprehensive than that in Zen. It is satisfying as a work of pop philosophy because it raises big questions and provides unusual answers to them. Also, in Lila, Pirsig presents the musings of both the narrator and Lila, giving the plot a sense of depth which is lacking in the monologue of Zen. Lila's thoughts offer an alternative perspective on the "actual" events of the novel...
...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...
Even with such poetry, Owen does manage to maintain the frame of a practical how-to. His goals for the book extend far beyond the pleasures of entertainment. A fan of zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (which he read in college), Owen wants to "demystify technology" for all home owners. "There is a powerful feeling of tranquility that comes from knowing how one's house is put together," Owen writes. "My childhood would have been somewhat less anxiety-ridden had I realized...there was no way for pirates to crawl... from the laundry chute...