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LILA

AN INQUIRY INTO MORALS

Pirsig's absorbing second novel, appearing nearly two decades after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, continues where his former work left off—in an exploration of the Metaphysics of Quality set against a journey by sailboat to the Atlantic Ocean. Phaedrus, peripatetic author of a successful book about motorcycles, is once again on the road in this philosophical odyssey—or rather on the Hudson River, as he makes his way toward the Atlantic and, eventually, Florida. His initial goal was to isolate himself sufficiently to complete his second novel, which currently consists of hundreds of notes that he regularly reorganizes and stores in rusty card-catalogue drawers. But isolation is the last thing a sailboat captain experiences on the water, Phaedrus discovers, and it's just as well, because his encounters with Lila (an aging former prostitute), Richard (her childhood friend), and assorted others along his journey inspire even more exciting concepts for his philosophical book. Chief among these is the concept of "quality" or value, which Phaedrus posits as the basic organizing principle of the universe. Shifting away from the Western world's reliance on subject-object and cause-and- effect relationships, Phaedrus suggests that everything is instead an expression of more or less quality, and that evolution moves not toward survival of the fittest but toward higher forms of value. While Phaedrus teases a "scientifically-based" morality out of this concept (lower forms of quality, such as individual humans, should be sacrificed if necessary in favor of higher forms, including society and, even higher, ideas), Lila begins exhibiting psychotic behavior and Richard becomes increasingly irritated with Phaedrus' abstract, self-absorbed pose. Readers may occasionally feel the same irritation—scenes that advance the plot seem carelessly scribbled in the author's hurry to get back to his theory—but as ever Pirsig's provocative ideas far outweigh such drawbacks. Engrossingly, utterly Pirsig—fans will not be disappointed.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1991

ISBN: 0553299611

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Bantam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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