[sveng]

I agree with you, it’s a fantastic book, and not really about motorcycles at all.

(If memory serves, Pirsig used note cards or slips of paper to assemble this ambitious work. Post-It’s were first sold in 1977; the book was published in 1974.)

Those who have an open mind and want to try the book should find the 10th anniversary edition; the author’s afterword explains some things that some readers found elusive.

Pirsig’s obituary in the N.Y. Times is excellent:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/book...

[defined]

> Pirsig used note cards or slips of paper

Ah, yes, my mistake. In my memory I confused index cards with PostIt notes.

> and not really about motorcycles at all

It's Zen, but it's not about Zen; it describes motorcycle maintenance, but it's not about motorcycle maintenance.

These are just a vehicle (no pun intended) for Pirsig to show us the inside of his post-apocalyptic mind, as far as he could remember once being who he called Phaedrus before they zapped him.

I found the book a multidimensional view of Pirsig's current and previous mental state and philosophy, just like the description of a computer software architecture is a multidimensional view of the architecture, neither and none of which can be described by a mere linear narrative.

It (ZATAOMM) is part philosophy, part memoir, part attack on what he calls the Church of Reason, part description of insanity, and more things I can't think of right now. No wonder it took him 4 years to pull together all those threads of consciousness, some of which were very damaged indeed.

Although, like another commenter noted, just spending 4 years on writing a book doesn't mean it automatically deserves accolades - and I agree with that observation - someone who reads it with even a fraction of the patience and insight with which it was written, might be tempted to award accolades after all.