Book Review - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values by Robert M. Pirsig

London: Corgi, 1989 (originally published Bodley Head, 1974)

ISBN 0552101664

This has been a book on my "to read" list for many many years. My brother-in-law mentioned to me that he read it in his twenties and it blew him away, and asked me if he should re-read it; I suggested to him that he may be disappointed if he did. I'm sure I would have been blown away by this book in my twenties as well. Reading it in my fifties... not so much.

As the subtitle states, this book is really an inquiry into values: why do we think the way we (i.e. in the West) do, and is it inhibiting our ability to live a fulfilling life. This premise is explored through the description of a long motorcycle trip taken by the author with his son, and for part of the way with some friends. Incidents on the trip lead to discussions about why we think the way we do, especially the division in thought between technological and artistic thinking (or "classical" and "romantic" reason, as Pirsig terms it).

The book intersperses vignettes from the trip with longer pieces, "chatauqua", where Pirsig expounds on his theories. We learn that Pirsig has received shock treatment while at a mental institution, and prior to his incarceration he was an academic who thought he had stumbled upon a new way of looking at the World. His concept, of "quality", an indefinable thing that stood in between and object or activity and human knowledge or use of it, drives him to insanity.

The concept of "quality" drives the good in the World, from mechanics who care about their work to builders of walls in Korea. Pirsig sees much of the ills of the modern World are down to a lack of "quality" in what is done or made. The other point that Pirsig is at pains to make, and uses his friends as examples of, is that the divide between "classical" and "romantic" reason is an artificial one. Just as there is technical skill in a great work of art, so there are elements of art in building or maintaining bikes, for example.

The final section of the work describes Pirsig's earlier self spending time at the University of Chicago, where he learns that many of his ideas were espoused by the diaspora of Ancient Greek Philosophers, and he sees that the difference between Aristotle and Plato's view of the World contains the essence of his own ideas.

Along the way, Pirsig does provide some genuinely useful tips on motorcycle maintenance, showing how the right attitude can change a painful experience into a learning one.

This book was a million-seller on its release, with the structure of the book introducing complex issues and problems in an accessible way. The writing is workmanlike rather than scintillating, and at times Pirsig spends ten pages describing something that could be done in fewer.

The cover of the copy of this book that I have states "This book will change the way you think and feel about your life." It may have done if I had read it in my youth. In my middle-age I have found what Pirsig describes through experience.

While I did enjoy reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for me it contained no great revelations.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The perfect vehicle by Melissa Holbrook Pierson

The perfect vehicle : what it is about motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson

New York: W.W. Norton, 1997                      ISBN 0393318095

I very nearly put this book down a few pages into reading the Foreword, which describes what it's like to ride a motorcycle, but reads like a poorly executed creative writing class exercise. Thankfully I persevered with the book, and Pierson left the classroom to pen what is an interesting, thoughtful and at times moving book about motorcycling, from an avid practitioner of the art.

Intertwined with diversions into motorcycle racing, manufacturing, record rides and other interesting facts, Pierson tells the story of her motorcycling life, which will ring true with fellow motorcyclists even as it teaches them things they don't know.

Like many people who come to motorcycling from a family that doesn't partake in the past-time, Pierson was introduced to 'bikes through a significant relationship; in Pierson's case a boyfriend. Her riding history in this book is also a history of her relationships until - after marrying a non-rider - she can truly realise that she loves the activity of motorcycling itself, rather than her involvement with other motorcyclists.

After acknowledging that it is impossible to impart in words the visceral experience of riding to someone who has never done it, Pierson does try to describe what it is about riding that hooks the hard-core few (4-7% of American motorists) into choosing it over many other things. And there is so much to describe: the feeling of travelling through country rather than over it, of being one with the machine, of the feeling of achievement in overcoming obstacles of weather, roads, and sometimes the fickle machine itself.

Pierson is a rider who likes to travel on her 'bike, not just go for a short Sunday ride, and much of this book is taken up with stories of long trips both in the USA and Europe. And these trips keep living and are re-lived by the rider: in dreams, stories around the campfire, or in friendly bench-racing sessions at the local hostelry.

While things may have changed in the 20 years since this book was written - although I doubt it - Pierson points out the sexism inherent in motorcycling, where being female relegates you to being either a pillion, decoration, or ignored totally.

Finally this book is paen to that greatest of motorcycles - Moto Guzzi, the most legendary Italian maker of them all. Anyone who knows anything about motorcycles wants one, and those lucky few who own them are surely right to think themselves biker aristocracy. Pierson well describes the intense joy and pain that these Italian thoroughbreds can give an owner.

As a fellow rider (and it is a fellowship, as Pierson notes), I really enjoyed reading this book. As a biker, I'm probably not the person to say that a non-biker would "get it" after reading this, but I know that after I finish this review I'll be packing my panniers and heading out on the road.

A really enjoyable book, just make sure you skip the Foreword.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Outlaws: the truth about Australian Bikers

Outlaws : the truth about Australian bikers by Adam Shand

Sydney; Allen & Unwin, 2011       ISBN 9781741759792


Adam Shand is a writer who specializes in books about "true crime" - the type of books that use tabloid language to create a story that will hopefully sell, while entertaining on the way - the non-fiction version of airport fiction, easy to digest, and mostly forgettable.

Outlaws is a book of this genre, but one which, in between stories of fights, club runs and strippers, follows the story of a little known but very important stoush between governments and courts, with the biker clubs stuck in the middle.

The thread of this story is a simple one - Shand, in his role as TV journalist, hooks up with some Adelaide bikies, who are facing extinction from Mike Rann's law and order push, of which a big part was legislation to outlaw bikie clubs on the basis that they are fronts for criminal organisations. Shand asked for and was allowed entry to an Adelaide club to see first-hand what the bikie life was like, and how they were reacting to the crackdown.

Shand shows quite neatly how we all have to be careful when invited by the powers-that-be to believe what they tell us - many of the "crimes" that exist in the stats about these clubs are in fact things like traffic tickets and minor misdemeanours, rather than large scale criminal activity. In fact Shand quotes several (late) Melbourne underworld figures, who state that bikies were not major players in any of the drug crime going on in Melbourne at all.

Shand's time in bikie clubs shows him that while there are certainly bikies who travel on the wrong side of the law, a bikie club by it's very nature is not a dictatorship, where the members must do what they are told. In fact they are very democratic - everyone gets to have a say, and any disagreements are worked out, admittedly sometimes with fists rather than words. His central point is that yes, some bikies are definitely criminals, but there is no evidence that has been released by authorities that bikie clubs per se are involved in any criminal activity.

However, Mike Rann used the moral panic he created for his own political purposes, and introduced legislation that would have banned bikie clubs, and made it a criminal offence for members of the club to be together in the same location. There was no requirement that the police show evidence that any criminal act had been committed or planned, and the bikies were not entitled to test any such evidence in court. In effect, this legislation allowed the Government of the day to ban any association or group, based purely on the whim of that Government. Of course laws like this have been enacted previously - in places like Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, and other assorted dictatorships.

Mike Rann did not expect what happened next. The bikie clubs, usually at loggerheads with each other and eschewing the society of "citizens", started a process of banding together, forming in many states United Motorcycle Councils. These Councils became an avenue for the clubs as a combined force to fight these laws, which now began to appear or be talked about in other states.

These Councils became part of a groundswell of action coming from legal groups, bikies and concerned citizens. Shand's book documents the court battles that threw out the South Australian law (the NSW law has since been deemed illegal by the courts there). The irony of the situation of the "one percenters" upholding human rights and freedom is one that is not lost on this reader.

If you are after a light read with a heavy message, this book might be for you.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell