Sweet jesus. I wanna know more about this Pirsig guy, it seems like his reception wasn't great. Is it worth reading this, and/or the Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I love a fictional story with purpose but I don't have too much time to read (the shame, I know.)
I read Zen and was unimpressed; it was hailed as revelatory by a friend of mine, but seemed to offer no new insight.
I first read Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance and then Lila. I would recommend reading them in that order as Pirsig intended. The way he captures complex social mechanisms and examines them based off of their humanistic effect is genius and, for me, life changing. I couldn't encourage you enough to give this book a try. To me, this quote is Pirsig's epiphany about how what he call "an 'objective scientific' view of life" (reenforced by the common thought of his era) brought about an era of everyman-for-himself mentality and spiritual loneliness. The concepts he develops in his first and second book are intended to solve many of these perceptual problems inherent in western society by examining the issues brought up in everyday life and morally reacting to them (as he calls it, seeing and reacting to the highest level of "quality" in each moment). I am probably biased towards these books because I used the concepts in them to improve myself and therefore cannot reject them. I still believe that others can do the same. If you give them a try please get back to me and say what you thought about them, i've wanted to have some feedback from someone else for a while now.
OK, you sold me. I will tackle Motorcycle Maintenance ASAP and let you know! Thanks for the rec, it may take a while but once I'm done with finals I can get crackin'.