Found on 'A List of Valuable Things'

In Z&AoMM, Robert Pirsig starts chapter 4 with a list of valuable things "to take on your next motorcycle trip across the Dakotas". This is part of an exercise in general list making. Pirsig suggests that general list making is important, that a list of "valuable things to remember" should be kept in a "safe place for times of future need and inspiration". I'm sitting at my desk at work and I'm thinking (surrounded by lists) that not making lists is probably what I really should be doing right now...

Pirsig makes a list right down to the number of pairs of underwear and shirts and then, at the end of the list, he includes Thoreau's Walden which he suggests can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I wonder if it's just for him or if Walden has that special quality that I know Don Quixote has for me. Walden is very readable. Maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has that quality too (only 98.75 more readings to go!). I'm thinking that The Odyssey and Ulysses might too or Alice in Wonderland or Tristram Shandy -- books I think I could read a hundred times. Certainly not Lord of the Rings though. And ATP is a special case because it's the book I may never finish and always read.

Mechanics for the Mind

I'm just starting chapter 3 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I'm liking it so far again after approx. 30 years. It's a real period piece for one thing. It reads like 'an old fashioned book' (to quote Gordie Lightfoot). Pirsig is earnestly quizzical and tonally 'front porch'. So far, I've learned a little bit about mechanics and a little bit about the journey that he's taking us on. What's happening right now is the backstory. He's drawing a little circle and then drawing on the drawing. He's trying to pinpoint a problem by showing how it's manifesting itself in his two friends and then how he overcame the problem prior to our meeting him in this book and on this trip. The deliberateness of the writing and the storytelling is mirrored in the deliberateness that he advocates in the relationship that one needs to have to a motorcycle. You are the motorcycle but he hasn't really started to talk about that yet. It's kind of quaint and funny to hear him talk about 'technology' and how overwhelming it is. He ain't seen nothin' yet! But I'm on his 1970s ride and interested to see where it will take me at this point. It's fun to read a book again like this...

Apologies for my abysmal blogging record of late. Here's a link to last year at this time. It's happening again!!! Ahhhh! I'm spending hours a day reading and writing emails. I begin to think in terms of responses. Every question has an answer. Nothing can be ignored. Deadlines bind us. But there is light!



















I was waiting for someone the other day and noticed a lime-green copy of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on sale for 50 cents. So I bought it and opened the front cover. "You are the Motorcycle," it said. I said, "Ride on!"

New Year

Just a brief reconnection. I stayed away from computers for 2 weeks. Kind of interesting to live like that. It's like getting acquainted with an old reality. As usual, I didn't do a lot of reading...but did do some. I'm still looking for the right book. I started a book called Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam. It's linked short stories. The first two or three stories were very good, very readable and compelling but after that I got bored. I'll keep reading it though. I'm trying to be optimistic. I did some research and wrote a paper once about how editors and poets decide on the order of poems in a poetry collection. It's actually very interesting and strategic so I'm thinking that it's the same with this story collection. The book won the Giller Prize which is a big Canadian book prize. Maybe some of the judges only read the first 2 stories...who could blame them really...

Judging for a literary prize would be quite the reading experience. I find it challenging just to read one book.

I'm actually writing a review of a book right now. It's called Earth Alive: Essays on Ecology by Stan Rowe. Reviewing a book is an interesting experience and changes the way that you read a book. I'm concerned with structure and how the book fits with others in the field. This book is particularly difficult because Stan Rowe sprinkles these little tidbits of wisdom and clear insights throughout the essays but because it's a collection of essays and lectures and public talks over several years, it's hard to hover above the whole and see his cohesive view of things.


So if My Year of Reading started out with my haphazard thoughts about what I was reading but increasingly began to focus on psychonavigation and journeying through reading perhaps La Lectrice Errante is going to pursue reading-levitation, my attempts to 'hover above the whole'. I hope that I can at least get off the ground...