Dohhh.

And if I ever read about his father's antecedents, I had forgotten that,too.

Since I am maybe based more in the "Romantic" tendency I find I do not have the same connections with the book as people from the "Classic" tendency who have the skills and therefore a more intimate appreciation of what it is to work with the hands.

So the lessons that I draw, and the writing that resonates more with me are clearly different, but the genius of the book is that it not only appeals to both "traditions" / classifications, but it actually identifies them.

I was intrigued the other day to hear Professor Robin Downie - at the recent launch of Glasgow University's new "Centre for the Study of Applied Ethics and Legal Philosophy" (Pirsig would have been in there like a ferret down a drainpipe - it gives me hope that we may yet see a new Enlightenment) - quoting directly from Pirsig on this very subject, again from a "Classic" tradition, as one would expect of an academic...

For me, Pirsig's Metaphysics allows me to ask the right questions of Reality - adapting J A Wheeler's

"Reality is defined by the Questions you put to it".

That is Pirsig's - largely unrecognised, IMHO - genius.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson