The Long Trip Grinds To An End...At Last

At the end of section one when Pirsig first introduces the character of Phaedrus, he has this to say on the forgotten man's behalf: "His wife and family seem to have suffered most...No one really knew him."

The Phaedrus introduced in this opening section is a tragic character, but not a particularly sympathetic one. Now, here at the end of this book, I feel that I was done a disservice so innocuous at the beginning of my shared journey with Pirsig that I could not put together until now precisely why I disliked this book. This is not to say that I hated it, or that reading it was onerous, but that at the conclusion I felt the author himself had been condescending me from the beginning and I found it too impossible to believe that any writer could have such disdain for his own audience that I ignored it for the majority of the book.

I had hoped that this book would be a backwards glance, from someone who had experienced, healed and meant to relay his story. Instead, I felt chastised by a man who talked about the catastrophe of Phaedrus' struggle with a reminiscing fondness that makes me wonder if her changed at all. While that in and of itself is a fascinating topic (did the "new personality" differ at all from the old? was this a question of stability rather than logos?), the early sections of the book present an opportunity to look at the ways in which Phaedrus failed in his examination of the world, the means by which he drove himself insane. Instead, Pirsig waxes philosophical about the glory of Phaedrus' golden years and the genius of his philosophy. While Phaedrus' intelligence in unquestionably high, the pedestal Pirsig places him upon seems hollow. Phaedrus did not answer any questions, he simply performed an acrobatic leap over the commonly accepted line of questioning to ask his own.

In chapter 28, as Pirsig describes Phaedrus' helplessness and despair when confronted with his search for the bunk-bedders with Chris, I thought he might finally be coming around to an analysis of the failures of the Phaedrus character. And he does speak to the fear and uncertainty, but his narrative makes it clear that those  are secondary things, sacrifices for Phaedrus in the face of his search for Quality, and sacrifices for the narrator in his search for his own history.

And in his description of the beauty of the untouched west, he reminds me of my father, if my father routinely spoke to me like I was an illiterate child incapable of independent thought. I rebel, perhaps as the by product of my own generation, against the idea that the past was pure and simple and the future is ruining  all we have left in the world. The past had its beauty, simplicity, and glory. But it also had its brutality, complexity, and conflict. The narrator romanticises the past in the same way he romanticises Phaedrus, highlighting the beauty of something long past and pretending that those beautiful moments comprise a holistically better era.

Yoga Was Good For Me, But I Quit It Anyway

I'm beginning to think that most of the frustration I see in Pirsig (and Macrorie before him) comes from the frustration in my life right now.

Last night, in my Honors Seminar, we discussed section one of Pirsig's book - and came to drastically different conclusions that this Capstone class about the worth of a classical/romantic split and how well a dichotomy like this will hold up in the rest of the book. And I  realized that, in reading just one excerpt, everyone in the room took away very, very (very) different meaning. And that, as a class, we came to a collective agreement very different from discussion #1.

As I finished this section, our differences in discussion got me thinking. I know the frustration is in Prisig's book, and I know it was in Macrorie's. Both authors rage against an unseen foe who is slowly helping education and inquisition atrophy. But the anger is hard for me to see beyond. Their frustration rings so true to me on a personal level that I am almost unable to move beyond it and take in the other meanings in the book.

In one way, that is a nice, refreshing reaction, since almost all books should be read more than twice to get anything out of them at all, but in classes, my fixation on the author's frustration becomes something of a block.

I think that these books say something different to everyone who reads them because they are demandingly introspective. They seek the things that are upseting the lives of their readers and attempt to offer clarity. Unfortunately, a single good book is not, in and of itself, enough to inspire true clarity in a reader.

I really shouldn't have quit doing yoga...

I Am Only Self-Critical Enough to Know The Things I Hate

Things I want to talk about in this blog:
Being self-critical is really hard and really useful. Some people do it better than others. Why is this important for us as writers?

So, yeah. Being self-critical is hard, and not for the most obvious reasons (although, also for those, a little bit). It's far, far too easy to go too hard in the other direction, hence the title of this blog. My self-esteem is tied, in part, to my perception of my objective worth as a person but I am also the least objective person in the world on this particular topic. So my self-image is either "Goddess" or "Satan", with no in-between. For obvious reasons this can be both awful and excellent depending on my mood.

Prisig's writing is so remarkably self-aware that I want to accuse him of falsifying his memories of himself to make his less aware. He doesn't react with outward anger towards those around him, but he remembers feeling the angry impulse; he shows his own insecurity in his physical descriptions when he turns away from conflict or emotion he does not want to engage with. This transparence kept me reading long past when my interest in the subject at hand. If I could emulate any aspect of his strategy, it would be his transparent self-image.

That mentality is especially critical in writers, because our taste evolves far ahead of our abilities (in most cases, at least). So I know when my writing is bad and I can head how off the words sound, but I don't always know what makes them this way. To be so honest with ourselves regarding not only criticism but complements and goals would improve our writing a thousandfold. The self-affirmation that your work sucks and that it sucks slightly less than the one before can help you move forward in you life instead of dwelling on the negative. We are taught that these negative criticisms are comprehensive, that self-complementing is a weakness. The positive is a vital part of the creative process, because it moves the writer in the right direction.

After all, you don't really know a thing until you know how to do maintenance on it and take better care of it than just handing it off the mechanics (or technicians) whenever something goes wrong. Ex. I can't repair a computer, but I sure as hell know how to debug one. And manuscripts that you can't edit are worse than useless.

But the most important tool for writers is the one many people care for the worst and that is the most valuable application of Prisig's book for me: self-care. Without the writer, a book is just a lost idea, a conference paper waits for someone to have a distantly similar though, a poem stays in the inanimate objects that have failed to inspire. For Prisig and his son, the motorcycle trip is a journey of self-care



Also, Prisig rises earlier in the morning than anyone should ever feel compelled to.