Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book we’ve featured before on Silodrome, it’s one of those must-read paperbacks that tends to quickly find a permanent place on the bookshelf of anyone who’s read it.
The book was written by author and motorcycle enthusiast Robert M. Pirsig, a highly educated man with degrees in chemistry, philosophy, and journalism. At age 9 Robert had his IQ tested and scored an astonishing 170, he would skip multiple grades in school, graduating at the age of 14.
Robert and his son did a two-up motorcycle journey from Minneapolis to San Francisco and this book, his first, is a semi-autobiographical look at the journey and a series of philosophical subjects far beyond it.
When Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was first released it was compared to the writings of Dostoevsky, Broch, Proust, and Bergson, and many proclaimed it to be an instant classic. Looking back now 40 years later it’s clear they were right.
Robert passed away last year at the age of 88, he had a fascinating and oftentimes difficult life, but his impact on the world though his books and associated works will carry on unabated. If you haven’t yet read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you owe it to yourself to get a copy and add it to the bookshelf – once you’ve read it cover to cover of course.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
This Boeing 747 Wheel Table by Plane Industries is more or less exactly what it says on the tin – it’s an authentic Boeing 747 alloy wheel that’s been meticulously rebuilt into what is undeniably one of the greatest coffee tables money can buy. Each wheel is sourced directly from the airline industry, wheels that…
The Rotary Life Shirt is a design by DNBK – Dirty Nails Bloody Knuckles. It’s a one-man operation that produces 100% unique automotive artwork, and offers them to similarly inclined petrolheads as either t-shirts or prints. Rotary engines are the automotive equivalent of a cult, albeit a cult with red-line bashing Wankel engines, and a…
This series of posters by Rear View Prints showcases the world’s greatest race tracks in a clean, minimalist way that makes them perfect for display on just about any wall. You can order each print in a variety of sizes, the largest being 18″ x 24″, progressing down to 11″ x 17″, then in A2,…
This 40% scale Reynard Indycar model was designed for wind tunnel testing, as such it’s built to exacting specifications to exactly match the full scale race cars. Just two of these models were made in 1998, it took a team of over two dozen people three months to complete the project. Each of the models…
John Mollo was the costume designer for Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980), this is his sketchbook from the period of January 1978 to October 1979, and it includes many original costume designs from The Empire Strikes Back as well as two other films Mollo was working on at the time –…
The story of the Dambusters has become legendary, officially known as Operation Chastise, it was an attack on German dams using bombs that bounced across the water (like a stone skipping on a lake) until they hit the dam wall, detonated, and caused catastrophic damage. The dams were vital parts of the German war machine,…
