Wheelin’ Grace

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Franklin Freeman

Rejected by 121 publishers, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance appeared in April 1974 to a chorus of praise that included such eminent critics as Erich Hoffer and George Steiner. “The analogies with Moby Dick are patent,” the latter wrote, breathlessly, in The New Yorker. “Robert Pirsig invites the prodigious comparison. . . . What more can one say?”

Nineteen seventy-fou . . .

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