There is no mystery about what it means to be a “good” archer, though there is much artistry in the process of becoming one. The archer either hits the target or not, or gets some measurable distance near it. Though his book is arguably more famous and, for many, the original exemplar of the phrase “zen and the art of…”, it was of course derived from the title of a book that was more famous at the time: Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery. It’s right there on the page of a well or badly written text.Ĭonsider the art that Pirsig’s title alludes to.
We don’t need to ask anyone to tell us about it. Though the virtues of a text are many and varied, the quality of a text is obvious. Pirsig’s point, after all, was, not that we can’t talk about these things, but that we don’t really have to. It is ironic, perhaps, that Robert Pirsig’s famous novel has inspired generations of writers to think that it is impossible to say what makes a text good or bad, or even, perhaps, whether there is any such thing as good and bad writing. Nothing has been subject to greater mystification than the notion of “quality” in writing. “ And what is good Phaedrus, and what is not good - Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” (Socrates, as used in the epigraph to Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
He makes one point that particularly struck me: He writes, “I have known Bertrand Russell and I have known Tom Mix, and my Muse has grown out of the mulch of good, bad, and indifferent.” He also describes how he would simply make lists of words, nouns mostly, and how much of his work came out of a word that got his attention on the list.īradbury writes about the importance of reading broadly. He writes about the importance to him of writing every day. Zen in the Art of Writing is a collection of essays Bradbury wrote over a period of years on the topic of, obviously, writing. I am always looking for ways to improve my writing, so when this title turned up on Early Bird Books for $1.99 I grabbed it. Purchased during an Early Bird Books sale for $1.99 Zen in the Art of Writing Posted: Ap| Author: Mike Christie | Filed under: Books | Leave a comment
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