: "A Celebration of Robert M. Pirsig Chautauqua December 7-8, 2012," A close up of Montana State University‘s Library Display Exhibit Wall In this photo (and the next 7’ wide Panorama Photo Next), you see letters, manuscripts snapshots, and other memorabilia (really artifacts) displayed in MSU Library Display Wall: All are related to Robert Pirsig, and His book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (ZMM). Many of these artifacts are from the Robert (Bob) & Gennie DeWeese Family Archives, compliments of their daughter Tina DeWeese.

A) At right, you see hand written letter, perhaps Bob DeWeese’s, since not look to me as Pirsigs hand. This letter and many others displayed in this Wall, are, part of extensive correspondence between the DeWeese’s & Robert Pirsig, who have been close friends all these years. This correspondence, all on snail mail paper, continues to this day, to and from, 14190 Cottonwood Canyon Road. Now the current location of The Cottonwood Gallery (www.deweeseart.com & www.tomthorntonbronze.com).
B) In center are DVD’s Concerning ZMM & Pirsig. These are available from Anthony McWatt, with a complete listing at RobertPirsig.org

C) At lower right, one of many important ZMM quotes, very early on page 5. Never wasting a word, here Pirsig introduces a VERY important theme of the book of ZMM: “It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I’m looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

D) At left, a worn & tattered, broken in half (from intensive usage), is a New Age ZMM Edition (Pink ~1981), here open to page 196. We speculate that this “broke-in-half-point”, is because of the concentrated extra reading, and re reading pages of the pages before & after the page 196. Note how this page is about 1/3 yellow highlighted!!!. All this evidence of deep study by book owner MSU Professor Charles Pinkava, who teaches Pirsig's ZMM Book to MSU sutdents.

Below is the full text of this ZMM page 196, with yellow hilighted passages bolded.

[ START Page 196. ] “ … The wave of crystallization rolled ahead. He was seeing two worlds, simultaneously. On the intellectual side, the square side, he saw now that Quality was a cleavage term. What every intellectual analyst looks for. You take your analytic knife, put the point directly on the term Quality and just tap, not hard, gently, and the whole world splits, cleaves, right in two—hip and square, classic and romantic, technological and humanistic—and the split is clean. There’s no mess. No slop. No little items that could be one way or the other. Not just a skilled break but a very lucky break. Sometimes the best analysts, working with the most obvious lines of cleavage, can tap and get nothing but a pile of trash. And yet here was Quality; a tiny, almost unnoticeable fault line; a line of illogic in our concept of the universe; and you tapped it, and the whole universe came apart, so neatly it was almost unbelievable. He wished Kant were alive. Kant would have appreciated it. That master diamond cutter. He would see. Hold Quality undefined. That was the secret. ---
Phædrus wrote, with some beginning awareness that he was involved in a strange kind of intellectual suicide, Squareness may be succinctly and yet thoroughly defined as an inability to see quality before it’s been intellectually defined, that is, before it gets all chopped up into words . . . . .. We have proved that quality, though undefined, exists. Its existence can be seen empirically in the classroom, and can be demonstrated logically by showing that a world without it cannot exist as we know it. What remains to be seen, the thing to be analyzed, is not quality, but those peculiar habits of thought called ‘squareness’ that sometimes prevent us from seeing it." [[As you see in the photo, here this page has the word ASSUMPTIONS, in bold ink, all capital lettersm, hand written by by book owner, MSU Professor Charles Pinkava.]] Thus did he seek to turn the attack. The subject for analysis, the patient on the table, was no longer Quality, but analysis itself. Quality was healthy and in good shape. Analysis, however, seemed to have something wrong with it that prevented it from seeing the obvious. .. I look back and see Chris is way behind. "Come on!" I shout. .. He doesn’t answer. .. "Come on!" I shout again. .. Then I see him fall sideways and sit in the grass on the side of the mountain. I leave my pack and go back … “ [ END Page 196. ]

Photo posted on FB & ZMMQG
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