Robert M. Pirsig has died. He wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I purchased in 1974 on the strength of a review. It is odd that I was thinking about him over the weekend in connection with what he called “gumption traps”—undertakings so daunting that one is stymied by their mere contemplation (I was reflecting that I was applying the Benchley method by leveraging one such gumption trap to dislodge another). I wondered whether he was still around. “Must be,” I concluded. “I’d have heard about it otherwise.” And he was, and I did when he died the following day.

I’ve long meant to return to ZatAoMM; don’t think I’ve contrived to over the decades. It’s a longish, densely-reasoned tome (the linked review will give you an idea of its character) that might not resonate with a generation raised on Twitter, but his work desrves to be remembered.

cordially,