I disagree about Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was a decent read, but much of its wisdom gets negated at the end. You realize he's not wise, because he wasn't listening to the person right next to him. He's been trapped in his head the whole time.

Pirsig admitted in a later interview that he wrote the book because his son had died and he need closure. So he imagined riding with his son. Once I knew that, I felt much better about the book. I could see it as a very lovely presentation of unraveling the knots in his mind by showing them to the son he wished he still had with him.

If I had to pick a book for the most page-for-page wisdom, it'd be Bob Mould's autobiography. I've read it thrice. Even he got so much out of the process that he restarted his career.

I would give Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America the second spot. I read that right before I hit puberty. It taught me stuff about the pedestrian part of being an adult, without forcing any conclusions on the reader. It has plenty of absurdism, such as mailing a wino to the editor-in-chief of The Nation. It also has:

  NO TRESPASSING
  4/17THS OF A HAIKU