Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig is perhaps one of the most unusually named works of contemporary philosophical narrative. The book takes the form of a novel in which certain philosophic truths about Zen are revealed. The book attempts to explicate Zen Buddhism for an American audience through the use of a narrative and a subject matter that will be understandable to an American audience.

The plot of the novel is deceptively simply.

The novel and philosophical classic tells the tale of a man named Phaedrus who is traveling across America with his troubled son and a couple, the Sutherlands. Phaedrus, the narrator later explains, is a kind of name for the author's former identity, the person whom he was before his electroshock treatments. As the group travels across the country, they discuss different philosophical issues, the Sutherlands espousing and emotional and impractical Romantic philosophy...
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