Everything about Robert Pirsig totally explained
Robert Maynard Pirsig (born
September 6,
1928,
Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an
American writer and
philosopher, mainly known as the
author of the book (1974), which has sold millions of copies around the world.
Life
Pirsig was Born in
Minneapolis,
Minnesota,
USA. His father, Maynard, taught at the University of Minnesota Law School from 1934, and served as Dean from 1948 to 1955 before retiring in 1970. Pirsig's mother, Harriet Marie Pirsig (Sjobeck), is of Swedish origin
(External Link
).
Because he was a child, with an
IQ of 170 at age 9, Pirsig skipped several grades. In 1943, Pirsig entered the
University of Minnesota to study
biochemistry. In
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he described himself as being far from a typical student. He was an idealist of a sort, interested in science as a goal in itself, rather than as a way to establish a career.
While doing biochemical lab work, Pirsig was greatly bothered by the fact that there was always more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and that the number of such hypotheses seemed almost unlimited. He couldn't think of any way around this, and to him it seemed that the whole scientific endeavor had been brought to a halt, in some sense. This question so distracted him that he was dismissed from the university for poor grades.
After serving with the U.S. military in
Korea, he returned to Minnesota and completed his B.A. in philosophy in
1950. He then attended
Banaras Hindu University in
India to learn about Eastern philosophy. He also did graduate work in
philosophy at the
University of Chicago, but didn't obtain a degree. His difficult experiences as a student in a course taught by
Richard McKeon are described, thinly disguised, in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance..
Until the publication of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig supported himself with freelance work and by teaching freshman
English and
rhetoric at
Montana State University. An emotional and mental breakdown led him to spend part of the period 1960 – 1963 in and out of mental institutions, where he underwent
shock therapy.
Pirsig married Nancy Ann James in 1954. They had two children, Chris (1956) and Theodore (1958). Pirsig and James divorced in 1978. Later that year, he married Wendy Kimball.
In 1979, Pirsig's son Chris — who had played an important role in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — was stabbed to death during a
mugging outside the
San Francisco Zen Center. Pirsig discusses this incident in an afterword to subsequent editions of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, writing that he and his second spouse, Kimball, decided not to abort the child she conceived in 1980, because he'd come to believe that this unborn child was a continuation of the life pattern that Chris had occupied. This child is Pirsig's daughter, Nell.
Pirsig avoids the public eye. He travels around the
Atlantic by boat, and has resided in
Norway,
Sweden,
Belgium,
England, and in various places around the U.S.
Published material
Pirsig's work consists almost entirely of two books.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance sets out Pirsig's interpretation of "Quality" and "the Good." It is mostly a first person narrative of a motorcycle trip across North America undertaken with some friends and his son Chris.
Pirsig's publisher's recommendation to his Board ended with "
This book is brilliant beyond belief, it's probably a work of genius, and will, I'll wager, attain classic stature." In his
book review,
George Steiner compared Pirsig's writing to
Dostoevsky,
Broch,
Proust, and
Bergson, stating that "
the assertion itself is valid... the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent". The
Times Literary Supplement called it "
Profoundly important, Disturbing, Deeply moving, Full of insights, A wonderful book".
In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, (1991), in which he elaborates and focuses on a value-based
metaphysics, called
Metaphysics of Quality, to replace the
subject-object view of reality.
Metaphysics of Quality
In
2005, Dr. Anthony McWatt at
Liverpool University, England, organized the first conference on Robert Pirsig's
Metaphysics of Quality. At the same time, Liverpool awarded McWatt the first
PhD specifically concerned with the subject.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Robert Pirsig'.
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