Robert M. Pirsig Dead at 88 →

The Guardian reports:

Robert Pirsig, author of the influential 1970s philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has died at the age of 88.

I’m late to post this, partly because I jumped right back in and re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the third of fourth time. And after doing so, I still wanted to acknowledge his passing.

I love Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a number of reasons. The autobiographical story about a man who takes a motorcycle trip with his boy is a great story by itself. I’m also fascinated by his intellectual ideas around the unification of spiritual feeling and technological thought. And, the use of a first-person narrative, which is used to unfold the meanings of the book, is brilliant.

I’m sure that after a period of failing health that … “things are better now. You can sort of tell these things.”