Editor’s Introduction to the ZMM Quality Website

By Andrew Geyer, Ph.D.

An Account of the Site Editor’s Experiences with Robert Pirsig’s Classic Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and an Explanation of His Editorial Approach to the ZMM Quality Site

Encounters with ZMM

Round 1:

I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance back in the 1980s when I was attending the University of Texas. I was an undergraduate at UT back before the big tech boom of the 1990s made living in Austin so expensive, and my only means of transportation was a motorcycle—well, I suppose a series of motorcycles, actually. I had just gotten out of the Army; and I rode my Honda 750 Nighthawk from Fort Bragg, NC to Austin, TX; grew out my hair; and became an Austin hippie.

I was assigned to read ZMM for an undergraduate English course. I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about the book that first time through. I loved the accounts of the road trip, and I loved all the motorcycle maintenance stuff (I grew up riding dirtbikes on the Southwest Texas ranchland of my family and friends, and had been tinkering with bikes for years). But the Chautauquas were over my head. I couldn’t connect with much of the philosophy that is so central to many of the lessons, and I had never taught writing. So I gave the book a mixed review and moved on to other things.

Round 2:

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again in the 1990s when I was working on my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. Since my last encounter with ZMM, I had been through a Yamaha 750 Virago and a Honda CB 900. I had done some traveling in South America, Europe, and North Africa. And I had studied some philosophy. I was currently riding a Honda V45 Magna, trying to figure out the meaning of life, and working hard to learn how to write fiction that mattered.

An acquaintance who later became a very good friend asked me one night whether I’d read ZMM. I said that I had. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him that I had mixed feelings about the book, and I told him why. He said that I absolutely had to give it another try. So I dug out my pink Bantam edition of ZMM and dug in. This time, I was much impressed. As a Creative Writing graduate student in a program that was, at the time, dedicated mostly to the study of literature, I was quite taken with Phaedrus’s discussion of the university as the Church of Reason. And having run afoul of a literature professor who very much resembled the Chairman that Phaedrus has such trouble with at the University of Chicago, I felt that I had lived that part of the book. I had also been studying the Tao Te Ching, and thinking much on the relationship between East and West. But I was especially taken by one passage from ZMM that is still highlighted in my copy of the book: “A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.” For me, it was a revelation.

Round 3:

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the third time when I agreed to take on the task of editing Henry Gurr’s ZMMQ Website. Since my last encounter with ZMM, very much had changed with me. I’d been married, divorced, and married again. I had children. I’d earned a PhD in American Literature, gotten a tenure-track teaching job at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, and given up motorcycle riding. I was still trying to figure out the meaning of life, and still working hard to learn how to write fiction that mattered, but I had published three books of my own (see the links below).

I studied, and pondered, over Henry Gurr’s most excellent website in an attempt to figure out how to optimize its content to better serve the needs of the wide variety of visitors to the site—while still being true to ZMM and its author. It soon became evident that another deep draught from the ZMM well was in order. To my surprise, the book was completely different for me upon this third reading. The first major difference was that I experienced the book for the first time as a father. In both my previous readings, I more closely identified with the perspective of Chris. This time, having the experience of raising kids—and of taking kids on road trips—it was the Pirsig/Phaedrus character I felt closer to. And thus, one of my major hang-ups with ZMM, my sense that the Pirsig/Phaedrus character dealt too harshly with Chris, disappeared. I had played the role of Pirsig/Phaedrus myself on many a road trip with my own children, and had dealt with them in much the same way. The second change had more to do with my own experience as a writer of fiction. I discovered that Pirsig’s set of steps for working through gumption traps when repairing a motorcycle engine was practically identical to the process I went through when rewriting and revising a book-length manuscript. Another revelation! And finally, I came to the book on this third reading having done much thinking about the insanity that is inherent in the human condition. I had come to realize that for all intents and purposes, sanity is the cost of higher consciousness. We’re all crazy. It’s just a matter of whether or not we’re a danger to others.

Ruminations:

I don’t claim to have come away from my series of encounters with ZMM as an expert on the book. But I have carried with me the knowledge that Pirsig’s concept of Quality applies to everything I do: making and savoring a cup of coffee, taking a run through the woods, or fixing a broken manuscript. There is so much here to grapple with, so much to savor. That is perhaps the greatest strength of this ZMMQ site: its purpose is not to provide definitive answers, but rather to bring an array of perspectives to bear on Pirsig’s complex and important work—and to encourage readers to dig in, and connect.

My Editorial Strategy with the ZMMQ Site

Henry Gurr’s ZMMQ website is a treasure trove of information for those interested in Robert Pirsig’s classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I had no desire, after a thorough study of the ZMMQ site’s contents, to “rewrite” the site. It sprawls and encourages visitors to meander, in the very best sense of the word, as with the secondary roads that Pirsig says at the beginning of ZMM give travelers “a sense of relaxation and enjoyment” and encourage them to connect with “the hereness and nowness of things.” But it seemed to me, having combed through the site’s contents with an editor’s eye, that some changes could be made to help visitors take better advantage of the wealth of resources the site provides. Those changes have been concentrated in four areas:

1. the layout of the menu has been reordered into a hierarchical building block structure, as Pirsig describes the organization of a motorcycle in ZMM;
2. the layout of the individual pages has been reworked into a more uniform format and appearance; also, when each page is revised, a date of revision and the filename of each page are added;
3. the content of the pages has been edited to correct grammar errors and increase overall readability, as is insisted upon by Pirsig in ZMM;
4. I have tried to integrate new content in such a way as to augment the material that was already present on the site.

One of the great messages of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is that “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” This lesson is central to ZMM, and it is also central to Henry Gurr’s ZMMQ website. I have tried to keep it always in mind as I make each change.

Each individual page on the ZMMQ website is important in and of itself. I have tried to reshape the layout of each page, and to hone its contents, so that upon accessing a page—and most especially when doing so for the first time—each visitor can appreciate that page as a thing of beauty in its own right, while at the same time taking full advantage of the information about ZMM the page contains. At the same time, though, I have tried to keep in mind that each page on the site is a part of the greater whole. So I have tried to make it easier for the visitor, having interacted fully with the first page she or he sees, to take more steps into the site and interact with the contents of more pages. The reorganized menu is key to this goal, as is the more standardized layout for each page on the ZMMQ site. Essentially, my aim here has been to give visitors “a compass in one pocket “as the narrator of ZMM says he always carries on country roads, to be used on “overcast days.”

Some visitors come to the ZMMQ site because they are curious about ZMM, and are wondering if the book is right for them. Such visitors might alight first on Henry Gurr’s Why Read ZMM page, which contains a number of very good reasons for reading Pirsig’s classic book. The page also contains links to other pages on the ZMMQ site meant to encourage first-time readers, as well as links to other websites that offer the same type of encouragement. Upon beginning ZMM, perhaps that first-time reader might get frustrated, or even stuck on some difficult aspect of the book. This might be an incentive for said reader to visit the ZMMQ site again. Maybe this time the visitor might come to Dr. Gurr’s very helpful Read ZMM Without Frustration page. Another go at ZMM, after some much-needed encouragement, might bring the reader back to the ZMMQ site to look at photos of Pirsig’s trip, or to learn more about the people who appear in the book on Dennis Gary’s excellent pages that detail anecdotally his knowledge of the people Pirsig wrote about in ZMM. A trip to Mr. Gary’s Photo Page might lead the visitor on to ZMMQ pages that give more information about Sarah Vinke, or Shirley Luhrsen, or Robert DeWeese…

Other visitors, steeped in ZMM from multiple readings, may come to the ZMMQ site for further information from Mr. Gary, or from the wealth of pages on the ZMMQ site that offer aid to those interested in doing research on ZMM. Such visitor’s might read Pirsig’s letters, or view photos of the ZMM motorcycle trip, or seek related readings to ZMM on Dr. Gurr’s Possible Alternatives and Extensions to ZMM page. The careful editing of the contents of each individual page on the site makes it easier for these visitors to interact meaningfully with the wealth of resources those pages contain.

Now we begin to see the Western idea of linear progress give way to the Eastern idea of circular progress which lies at the heart of the ZMMQ site, and of ZMM. In ZMM, Robert Pirsig’s epic motorcycle trip with his son Chris, which is the foundation upon which the book is built, takes the form of a circle. Each chapter of ZMM is also circular in its construction: beginning with an episode from the motorcycle journey, moving into a Chautauqua, then returning to the journey again. The interactions of visitors with the ZMMQ site also tend toward a circular form, returning over and over again to savor the content on other parts of the site. My goal as editor of the ZMMQ site has been to maximize the value of each stop on each visitor’s journey through the ZMMQ site while at the same time encouraging each visitor to circle back again.

I guess the main thing I have tried to accomplish as an editor is to encourage the kind of interaction with the ZMMQ site, and with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, that Pirsig refers to in ZMM as “selfless climbing”. The narrator describes a pilgrimage that Phaedrus undertook—but failed to complete—to Mount Kailas. The reason Phaedrus came up short was that the journey was for him merely the means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Unlike Phaedrus, the pilgrims who actually reached the mountain “sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each footstep was an act of devotion…”

Contact Andrew Geyer

e-mail Dr. Geyer at the following: ageyer***usca.edu
Please put in the correct symbol at the correct place.

Links to Websites Related to the Contents of This Page

1) Andrew Geyer’s Personal Website

2) Andrew Geyer’s Webpage at USC Aiken

3) Andrew Geyer’s Amazon Author Page

4) Henry Gurr’s Why Read ZMM

5) Henry Gurr’s ZMMQ for Beginners

6) Henry Gurr’s Possible Alternatives and Extensions to ZMM

7) Dennis Gary’s The Sarah Vinke of My Student Days

8) Dennis Gary’s Photo Page

Edited by Andrew Geyer 22 Feb 2011; minor edit David M. 15 Sept 2012.

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