"Told by the blurb that we have here "one of the most unique and exciting books in the history of American letters," one bridles both at the grammar of the claim and at its routine excess. The grammar stays irreparable. But I have a hunch that the assertion itself is valid... Zen and the Art is awkward both to live with and to write about. It lodges in the mind as few recent novels have, deepening its grip, compelling the landscape into unexpected planes of order and menace... the narrative tact, the perfect economy of effect, defy criticism... the analogies with Moby Dick are patent. Robert Pirsig invites the prodigious comparison... What more can one say?"
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Novelists from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesPeople from MinneapolisGuggenheim FellowsUniversity of Chicago alumni
Original Language: English
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Sources
George Steiner, in "Uneasy Rider", The New Yorker (15 April 1974)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig
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Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsig (6 September 1928 – 24 April 2017) was an American philosopher and novelist, most famous for his novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which he proposed what has become known as his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ).
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