Pirsig-1991 Lila-An Inquiry Into Morals
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Robert Maynard Pirsig (/ˈpɜːrsɪɡ/; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991). In 1958, he became a professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, (USA) and taught creative writing courses for two years. Shortly thereafter he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Pirsig's published writing consists most notably of two books. The better known, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, develops around Pirsig's exploration into the nature of quality. Ostensibly a first-person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris had taken from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is an exploration of the underlying metaphysics of Western culture. He also gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle as part of an ongoing dispute between universalists, admitting the existence of universals, and the Sophists, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato. Pirsig finds in "Quality" a special significance and common ground between Western and Eastern world views. Pirsig had great difficulty finding a publisher for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. When he did, his publisher's internal recommendation stated, "This book is brilliant beyond belief, it is probably a work of genius, and will, I'll wager, attain classic stature." In his book review, George Steiner compared Pirsig's writing to Dostoevsky, Broch, Proust, and Bergson, stating that "the assertion itself is valid ... the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent". In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991), in which he developed a value-based metaphysics, Metaphysics of Quality, that challenges our subject–object view of reality. The second book, this time "the captain" of a sailboat, follows on from where Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance left off. 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' was like a first child. Maybe that will always be the best-loved one. But this second child is the bright one. I think a lot of people will argue with some of the ideas in Lila. There may be controversy. But if people are still reading these two books a hundred years from now, I predict Lila will be the one they consider the more important' Robert M. Pirsig 'The compendious and digressive qualities . keep you bumping through the pages . the voice of the narrator carries some of the folksy weight and salty wisdom of a Mark Twain' The Sunday Times 'Pirsig peppers the narrative with intriguing insights and provocative propositions' Guardian 'This is a book I'll come back to and read again . another one to be grateful for' Scotsman 'With his new novel, Lila, Pirsig has finally produced'a sequel. If the nesting nineties ignore it, Pirsig can't be blamed; he has written another challenging book' Toronto Globe and Mail This philosophical quest to discuss what motivates human beings is always fascinating' Publishing News 'Major quandaries such as Mind/Matter and Free Will/Determination are dismissed . with the flourish of a conjurer, and the world is carved up into biological, social and intellectual value patterns. Above and prior to these is Dynamic Quality, a mystical beginning and end' City Limits 'Lila is a marvellous improvisation on a most improbable quartet: sailing, philosophy, sex and madness' New York Times Book Review There's still this terrible sense of madness and reality behind it which makes you realise it was written because it had to be written . the journey's very much worthwhile' Time Out 'Lila provides much food for thought' Los Angeles Times The reader feels like whirling too, having being enlightened by this endlessly stimulating sail through the cosmos of modern philosophy' New York Times LILA An Inquiry Into Morals Robert M. Pirsig v. 1.0 CORGI BOOKS 2 LILA: AN INQUIRY INTO MORALS A CORGI BOOK 0 552 13894 0 Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd PRINTING HISTORY Bantam Press edition published 1991 Corgi edition published 1992 Copyright © Robert M. Pirsig 1991 The right of Robert M. Pirsig to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. p. 21 'Get Down Tonight' by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch. © 1975 Longitude Music Company. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by kind permission of Southern Music Publishing Company. p. 71 Extract from 'In Search of the April Fool' by Cathie Slater Spence. © 1987 Cathie Slater Spence. p. 133 and p. 389 Extracts from Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict © 1934 Ruth Benedict, © Ruth Benedict, © renewed 1961 Ruth Valentine, reproduced by kind permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 121 Extract from The Message in The Bottle by Walker Percy © 1954, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1967, 1972, 1975 Walker Percy, reproduced by permission of Mclntosh and Otis, Inc. p. 317 Extract from Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald © 1945 New Directions, reproduced by courtesy of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Conditions of Sale 1. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re- sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. 2. This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the UK below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book. This book was set in Melior by Falcon Typographic Art Ltd, Fife, Scotland Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd, 61—63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd, 15-23 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (NZ) Ltd, 3 William Pickering Drive, Albany, Auckland. Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks. to Wendy and Nell 3 Acknowledgement The author wishes to give special thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation for the grant under which this book was written. 4 Part One 1 Lila didn't know he was here. She was sound asleep, apparently in some fearful dream. In the darkness he heard a grating sound of her teeth and felt her body suddenly turn as she struggled against some menace only she could see. The light from the open hatch above was so dim it concealed whatever lines of cosmetics and age were there and now she looked softly cherubic, like a small girl with blond hair, wide cheekbones, a small turned-up nose, and a common child's face that seemed so familiar it attracted a certain natural affection. He got the feeling that when morning came she should pop open her sky-blue eyes and they should sparkle with excitement at the prospect of a new day of sunlight and parents smiling and maybe bacon cooking on the stove and happiness everywhere. But that wasn't how it would be. When Lila's eyes opened in a hung-over daze she'd look into the features of a gray-haired man she wouldn't even remember - someone she met in a bar the previous night. Her nausea and headache might produce some remorse and self- contempt but not much, he thought - she'd been through this many times - and she'd slowly try to figure out how to return to whatever life she'd been leading before she met this one. Her voice murmured something like 'Look out!' Then she said something unintelligible and turned away, then pulled the blanket up around her head, perhaps against the cold breeze that came down through the open hatch. The berth of the sailboat was so narrow that this turn of her body brought her up against him again and he felt the whole length of her and then her warmth. An earlier lust came back and his arm went over her so that his hand held her breast - full there but too soft, like something over-ripe that would soon go bad. He wanted to wake her and take her again but as he thought about this a sad feeling rose up and forbade it. The more he hesitated the more the sadness grew. He would like to know her better. He'd had a feeling all night that he had seen her before somewhere, a long time ago. That thought seemed to bring it all down. Now the sadness came on in full and blended with the darkness of the cabin and with the dim indigo light through the hatch above. Up there were stars, framed by the hatch opening so that they seemed to move when the boat rocked. Part of Orion momentarily disappeared, then appeared again. Soon all the winter constellations would be back. Cars rolling over a bridge in the distance sounded clearly through the cold night air. They were on their way to Kingston, somewhere on the bluffs above, over the Hudson River. The boat was berthed here in this tiny creek for a night's rest on the way south. There was not much time. There was almost no green left in the trees along the river. Many of the turned leaves had already fallen. During these last few days, gusts of cold wind had swept down the river valley from the north, swirling the leaves up off their branches into the air in sudden spiraling flights of red and maroon and gold and brown across the water of the river into the path of the boat as it moved down the buoyed channel.