I love books.

I've read nearly a thousand to date and most of those more than once.

Strangely, the book I loved best, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ISBN: 0-688-05230-4), penned by Robert Pirsig in 1974, doesn't fall into that category.

I've only read it once.

And it changed my life.

In 1996, I began teaching at Bartram High School in inner city Philadelphia. For two years prior, I had taught both advanced and remedial mathematics at Roman Catholic High School. It was the easiest job I have ever held, but it was math, and I pined for a job teaching the subject matter I loved, so, naturally, when a position opened for a teacher of English at Bartram High School, I jumped at it.

I regretted it immediately.

My first lesson, based on Robert Herrick's To the Virgins, was greeted with strings of profanity, empty threats of physical violence, and blatant celebrations of ignorance. The poetry and literature I loved was being manhandled in ways I'd never imagined it could be.

I lost my voice on the second day and lost 18 pounds in 14 days. God knows how far back my hairline receded in that time. I was on the verge of quitting every day.

In November of 1996, my friend and brother, "lent" me Pirsig's tome. I read bits of this masterwork every day before I left my apartment for work.

The concepts within it sustained me and gave me strength when I thought my tanks were dry.

From the first page, the feel of the book is Kerouacian. The narrator, who later becomes Phaedrus, the book's equivalent of Siddhartha, is taking a trip with his son, Chris, on a motorcycle.

Through the narrator's love of cycling, as well as his indomitable love for his son and obvious familiarity with classical philosophy, Pirsig establishes a series of complex truths in which the motorcycle, and the maintenance of the same, become a central symbol for life itself.

Beginning on page 102, Pirsig writes that it seems that most people view the steel of the motorcycles to be:

"...primarily physical. But...'steel' can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and...[shape is] what you arrive at, what you give to the steel."

It doesn't take much work to discover (and he says as much on page 103) that this is a lesson about life's potential - yours and mine. With enough perception and skill, life is what you make and, by way of extension, success is the shape we give to our life experiences and not the other way around.

Slowly, Phaedrus, in his search for self, begins to withdraw from everything around him. He is having a breakdown because he is unable to resolve many of the questions with which life presents him, such as the relationship between Quality and Care.

His growing madness is gradual, farraginous. The onset is triggered while he, relentlessly and simultaneously, attempts to reconcile why people at large are either unwilling or unable to concede that a relationship exists between Quality and Care, and tries to navigate the ever more labyrinthine journey into himself in the pursuit of his ideal: the unity of science, religion, and humanism.

"Quality," he argues, "...is the generator of everything we know." (p. 391)

His argument is based on the following tenets:

1.) Things (pardon my oversimplification of everything in the universe) which bear quality elicit our care, our interest.

2.) Things (we do, say, create, et cetera) reach a state of high quality because we care about them.

And, conversely,

3.) Those things which we care about (attempts to create, forge relationships, et cetera) often bear high quality.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also launches into discourses on what Pirsig refers to as "truth traps," "mu expansion," and "Chautauquas."

Interesting topics, all, but the reason that this book has changed my life lies within the Quality/Care relationship.

Let's go back to Bartram High School and the reason I claim this book has changed my life.

When I was thrust into such an intellectually hostile (let's forget the word intellectually and call it plain old hostile) environment, I inherited the angst and the perpetual failure of the students in my charge. I was a new teacher. I thought I mattered and could change social paradigms and the ongoing, systemic indifference to education single-handedly.

God complex?

Maybe.

Naiveté?

No doubt.

But I was too close to the madness to see it for what it was and blamed myself entirely (to the joys of politicians, media, and parents alike) for the vast wasteland that is public education.

Enter Robert Pirsig.

As I stated at the beginning of this epic review, I began reading the book every morning before work, simply as a distraction from the fact that I would soon be in a place where everyone hated me and nothing I did made a dent.

When I came to the bulk of Pirsig's work dealing with Quality and Care, I nearly broke into tears.

I had realized my salvation and it was this:

"Quality decreases subjectivity. Quality takes you out of yourself, makes you aware of the world around you. Quality is opposed to subjectivity." (p. 239)

I had lacked the distance, the clinical perspective to view the situation in its entirety. The ability I gained from this single insight was enough to persuade me to stick out the year.

Even as I type this I hear myself asking "This is all well and good, but how is this any different from a garden-variety rationalization?"

I defend myself (to myself) by pointing to the exemplary service I have provided, and continue to provide, my current students. I now have nearly a decade of teaching under my belt and can actually relate the story of my Bartram days without trembling.

Pirsig's book was a literary miracle at a time when I was the lowest point in my adult life.

Looks like my brother lost another one.

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Created Nov 05, 2005 at 8:12am • Submit your own review...