When I met Robert Pirsig in New York in 1993, he was concerned that I hadn’t included his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the bibliography of my own recently published Zen in the Art of Climbing Mountains, but had included Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. I explained that Herrigel’s book had been published much earlier, in 1953, and followed the classic approach to Zen philosophy that continued to influence me and many others. I told him that his book was spectacular, but it did not address Zen from the same physical and philosophical viewpoints.
Pirsig also knew about my continuing involvement in film production and asked for help in getting a movie of his book made. He had tried to do this several times but always failed. He wanted complete control over the production and just wouldn’t accept that that usually didn’t happen in the film industry. I could see why he hadn’t got anywhere. Pirsig was obviously very frustrated that his book’s huge popularity had overshadowed everything else he subsequently tried to accomplish. Nonetheless he produced a fascinating and worthwhile work, and deserves to be celebrated for it.
