The Review Man
Currently reading
This book came to me at a strange time. Normally I would give a book like this two stars and be done with it. But not now. I am going through something of a minor existential crisis, and as a result, I am taking some time off so as to focus on things of import.
The plot of this book is not really key—it's about a guy who rides his motorcycle around America and is not so nice to his son and talks a lot about a philosophical notion of Quality that is quite possibly too vague for my math-addled brain to appreciate. But the act of reading something intentionally (normally I speed-read, but here I took my time), and something that was at least tangential to philosophy and self-actualization at that, kick-started my brain.
Maybe Pirsig's notion of Quality is incredibly useful; maybe it's not that helpful. At first glance it does a good job of resolving the old subjective–objective aesthetics debate that's plagued me for a while, although I haven't really made my mind up as to the particulars. But at least it has me thinking, and I'm excited to see the results.