Zen And The Art of Maintaining What

Shelley writes: I read ZAMM once, a long time ago. I remembered thinking after reading the work that this was a book written by a man for men, though there is nothing in the work that is even remotely sexist. I felt, though, that I was reading a book written in language I've learned to speak fluently, but wasn't my native language. After Loren's reviews, I might try reading it again, and see if I still suffer the same disconnect.

What was worse, we were supposed to like that book ... and every other damn piece of writing that acted like half the world didn't exist. I find that waay more insidious. I don't remember understanding a damn thing.

Okay, not true, but if I'd faced up to what I understood perfectly well, I would have been appalled in real life (and therefore had no place to to live, me with two little, little kids.) Instead,  all that sort of feeling went underground where you better believe it ate at my cells. Turned my immune system inside out—we are mirroring creatures, and if the mirrors around us are all turned away, if the Narcissus spell has taken over the house, what am I saying? That sickness without begets sickness within?

You bet I am. Take care who you hang with. Better Pirsig should have written, Women, have your own money. Can you believe there was a time when the options were, for a girl without a high school diploma, and who could not clerk to save her soul, whose typing was a bloody nightmare: get married or hook. Blech. Revolting even to recount. As were the succeeding decades. Why am I telling you all this? It can't possibly be of interest, you have your own life, it's very hot where I live today.

Pirsig's son was murdered in San Francisco, someone we all cared about after plowing through that many pages. It was just a stupid little holdup, where the person with the gun sometimes for no reason at all pulls the trigger. We were all sorry for his loss.

(I skipped all the boring parts. I bet I would again.)