Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Tapa dura

On the Trail of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Zen and Now is the story of a story that will appeal to the 5 million readers of the original and serve as an initiation to a whole new generation.

Since its original publication in 1968, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values has touched whole generations of readers with its serious attempt to define “quality” in a world that seems indifferent to the responsibilities that quality brings. Mark Richardson expands that journey with an investigation of his own – to find the enigmatic author of Zen and the Art, ask him a few questions, and place his classic book in context. The result manages to be a biography of Pirsig himself – in the discovery of an unknown life of madness, murder and eventual resolution – and a splendid meditation on creativity and problem-solving, sanity and insanity.

Mark Richardson is the editor of the Wheels section of the Toronto Star. He turned forty-two at the end of his journey, which he amusingly explains is the “meaning of life,” according the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Zen and Now is his first book. He lives in Toronto.