Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This meandering, dense, rather insane book is chockablock with ideas, which gelled at times and at others never fully took shape for me, or fell through gaps in my knowledge. There are two components: a sort of sermon on philosophy and philosophers, centered around the quest of the narrator (Pirsig as his past self, “Phaedrus”) to find an answer to the question “What is Quality?” and an autobiographical account of the author’s road trip with his son, who has started showing signs of the mental illness that Pirsig himself was impacted by and received electroconvulsive therapy for years before. He talks about Zen a little. And analogously as well as in practical terms about motorcycle maintenance. But he’s more interested in the ancient Greek philosophers and human understanding under the categories of classical and romantic thinking. He argues that we can't find truth with only a rational mind, that a romantic attitude is also needed in order to achieve a higher level of quality or "good" in our lives.

The last few chapters are the best of the book, particularly the one about gumption. And the puzzle in the author’s mind eventually comes together, although it's never complete. Questions lead to more and more questions, and Pirsig’s motivation and aim for the whole thing are fuzzy. His depression comes through the writing as well, which is a drag in places, somewhat counterbalanced by the occasional flash of humor or description of nature from his On the Road-like trip. I don’t know anyone I’d recommend this book to, and I doubt I’ll pick it up off my shelf again, but it’s certainly unique and turns wheels in the head.

Excerpt from Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974):

Zen Buddhists talk about "just sitting,'' a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one's consciousness. What I'm talking about here in motorcycle maintenance is "just fixing,'' in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn't dominate one's consciousness. When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to "care'' about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself.

So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

The Samurai

Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai (1980) is a fictional account of a 17th-century diplomatic mission from Japan to “Nueva España,” or present-day Mexico, and then beyond to Spain and Rome. There’s a lot to this novel as it shifts between first- and third-person narrative, and from historical adventure to travel narrative, political drama and meditation on certain interpretations of faith and Christ.

It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical figures. As Van C. Gessel, the book’s translator, points out in the postscript, “Endō’s novel, besides being a superbly crafted piece of fiction, is a valuable work of speculation.” A group of about one hundred Japanese, along with Spanish sailors, really did travel to what is now Central America and then crossed the Atlantic and met with Pope Paul V. But almost no documents about their journey exist today.

For Endo, this skeleton must’ve compelled him to provide the right flesh and blood. Through his prose it's clear he spent considerable time working out each detail and contemplating the intentions and motivations of the characters and countries in play. The story also explores missionary work as a precondition for international trade (for Catholics, not Protestants), the rivalry and animosity between Franciscans and Jesuits, the hardships of sea travel, and methods of torture and killing used in Japan to humiliate and terrify Christians. The novel is also interesting for its depiction of Luis Sotelo (the Franciscan friar on which one character is based) and Christianity in the Tohoku region.

As an aside, I found this amusing… An excerpt from a 1982 article by Julian Moynahan, writing about Endo and The Samurai for The New York Times:

“Shusaku Endo is modern Japan’s most distinguished Roman Catholic novelist. If that description makes you blink, consider that a cross-national survey of religious belief published in American newspapers within the past year reported that among the populations studied, the Japanese came last in the percentage of people expressing any belief in immortality or the survival of the soul after death. Another recent survey, comparing I.Q. averages among populations of some leading nations, Eastern and Western, places the Japanese at the very top. It would seem, then, that Mr. Endo has his work cut out for him. Willy-nilly, a great part of his primary readership will be extra-bright people who are either not religious at all or who profess attachment to a religion for the sake of social solidarity, tradition, ceremony or worldly advancement.”

Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, the samurai who sailed to Rome and met Pope Paul V in 1615.

The Big Clock

Directed by John Farrow and starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Rita Johnson, this 1948 noir is a combination of farce and thriller.

Victim of circumstance George Stroud (Milland) is sure to be accused of the murder we already know his despotic boss (Laughton) committed. Most of the film, which is based on a Kenneth Fearing novel, is set in and around the skyscraper headquarters of Laughton’s publishing empire, where Milland's in charge of a magazine focused on true crime. All he wants is a vacation with his wife and son, something he's had to put off time and again because Laughton is always shoveling more work at him. He decides to quit, and for some reason has a few drinks with Rita, Laughton's former girl. Then, drunk, he buys a painting and is given a green sundial. The next morning he wakes up in Rita's hotel room with a hangover. He leaves her (still alive) to catch up with his wife in West Virginia, but soon after arriving in Wheeling he gets a phone call. Something bad has happened, and he tells his wife he must return to the city to straighten something out.

Meanwhile, Rita has been bludgeoned to death by sundial. For the next half of the movie, George evades the cops and his colleagues, who are basically working with him to look for him because a few witnesses saw him and Rita together the night before. The Big Clock is a fast 95 minutes of fun noir. It's complex and twisty with witty references to time and a disdain for media moguls and the materialistic.