Forty years after the cultural phenomenon of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance began, I believe I am ready to read and comprehend. Not only am I able to read better now but I have spent my adult life studying Eastern thought and believe I understand enough to know if Pirsig was FOS when he wrote it or not. The web contains information about the book, critics of the work, even the photos Pirsig took on his 17-day trip back in 1968.
I remember buying a copy of the purple book back in 1975 and reading enough to not be interested in reading any more.
In 1978, my first computer programming class (Pascal), the teacher at SFSU told us the ZAMM was the best text book on programming, "you need to read the entire text book simultaneously, knowing everything that comes later before you understand what comes earlier."
Today I check the audio book out from the library and intend to read it after finishing the WoT Knife of Dreams.
The wikipedia entry has a lot of interesting external links, including NPR interviews with Pirsig, the complete book online as well as the sites I mentioned above.
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