|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The book is about a seventeen day cross country trip by the narrator, his son and their friends the Sutherlands. They start out in Minnesota with deliberately indefinite plans, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. They ride back roads when possible, highways next and freeways if there is no other choice. The trip takes the narrator and his son, Chris, to California while the Sutherlands go their own way in Montana. But the main purpose of this book is not the road trip, but the battle of the narrator to remember and also contain his former self Phaedrus. The book unfolds through a series of Chautauquas, or stories. Historically Chautauquas were traveling tent-shows that used to move across America using an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. Each day the narrator would begin a Chautaqua and tell a story about what he could remember about Phaedrus, this is how we came to know who Phaedrus was, or still is. Phaedrus was the narrators former self, he always traveled alone and had no close companions or friends. It was unknown whether his aloneness was the result of his intelligence, or the cause of it, but the two were always together. Phaedrus had started college at the age of 15 by 17 he had lost interest and joined the Army. After his stay in the Army he returned to college with a renewed interest in his lifelong quest for the definition of quality. After his latest stint in college he went to India to study Oriental Philosophy but became distraught and returned home after a few years. Upon returning home he got a journalism degree and gave up his pursuit of what he called the ghost of reason, for now anyways. He found work as an English teacher at a Bozeman College in Montana. This is where he once again pursued the definition of quality. Phaedrus, who historically was an ancient Greek rhetorician was a composition major of his time and he was “present when reasoning was being invented,” began using his students to help him define the term quality. He would read several papers aloud in class and ask the class to tell him which one was of better quality, each time the class could recognize the better work. But when he asked the class for an actual definition of quality, they couldn’t put the definition into words. So he came to the conclusion that quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. And because definitions are a product of a rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined. But in the next statement he said, even though quality cannot be defined, you know what it is.
Approximate Word count = 1877
Approximate Pages = 7.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|