After about 10 years of off-and-on reading, I finally finished Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. What a great relief to finally be done with it. I’ve started this book several times, and really enjoyed how it began, but always hit a wall at around the same point. I love working on my motorbike, and I love traveling, so I always thought this book would be perfect for me. But there’s the third part of the story, which is the philosophical sub-plot which had always derailed me. The seemingly endless “chautauquas” or lectures about Quality were so obscure to me, I always lost interest. When Pirsig applies his classic and romantic reasoning to matters of motorcycle maintenance, the book was thoroughly enjoyable. But the story of Phaedrus left me wishing he’d go back to something related to motorcycles. My most recent effort at reading the book had me not spending so much energy trying to understand Phaedrus’ quest for Quality, but rather skimming over these parts, trying to get back to the travel plot. In the end, I enjoyed the book but also can’t help feeling that Pirsig’s Zen was so obscure, it could have all been a bunch of nonsense.