First, an additional note on Ayn Rand: Today's Dilbert cartoon in the Washington Post has Dilbert asking Wally if he is a psychopath (Wally says "The key to happiness is to love who you are not who others want you to be". Dilbert responds "Doesn't that make you a psychopath?"). This spurred me to first search Wikipedia for the definition of psychopath, and then to search google for "Ayn Rand Psychopath" which brought me to a very interesting entry on michaelprescott.net about Ayn Rand's relationship (and idolation) of convicted murderer William Edward Hickman.
Since completing "The Fountainhead", I've turned to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". This is actually about the third time I've read this book but the first in many years. What I recalled from my past readings was that it was about quality, about writing and about how grades and degrees were detrimental to learning.
It's interesting to compare ZATAOMM's narrator with Howard Roark from the Foutainhead. Both are idealists and I think that Rand would have approved of Phaedrus. It's interesting that Robert Pirsig didn't see the narrator as a hero. In this 1974 article from the New York Times, written by George Gent, Pirsig is described as seeing the narrator as a "dissembler who puts on his best face for other so he will be liked" -- exactly the sort of person whom Ayn Rand would not have liked. Phaedrus is described differently. Gent quotes Pirsig as saying that "Phaedrus was more honest -- he would never compromise, and the young respected him for that."
As I read ZATAOMM again I am struck by Pirsig's descriptions of the act of touring with a motorcycle. He writes about how the best roads are ones that go from nowhere to nowhere and where there's an alternate that will get you there faster. He mentions the roads that dwindle into cowpaths then finally end in some farmer's yard and he describes how riding in a car is like watching the outside go by on TV but that when riding a motorcyle you are *there*, the concrete of the road five inches below your foot.
Something that I do not think I noticed as much before is the plot structure of ZATAOMM; it's a kind of detective story or perhaps a murder mystery in a way. The book begins with us knowing that Phaedrus is dead and then gradually as we progress the reasons for his demise are revealed.
At present I'm at a little less than the half-way point and discussions of the nature of quality are starting to ramp up. This is of special interest to me now as I am, myself, just embarking on the rewrite of some software and am wondering how much quality it would be wise to attempt to inject into the project. There are, after all as the Christian Science Monitor article on Atlas Shrugged pointed out, lots of good reasons to compromise.
Since completing "The Fountainhead", I've turned to "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". This is actually about the third time I've read this book but the first in many years. What I recalled from my past readings was that it was about quality, about writing and about how grades and degrees were detrimental to learning.
It's interesting to compare ZATAOMM's narrator with Howard Roark from the Foutainhead. Both are idealists and I think that Rand would have approved of Phaedrus. It's interesting that Robert Pirsig didn't see the narrator as a hero. In this 1974 article from the New York Times, written by George Gent, Pirsig is described as seeing the narrator as a "dissembler who puts on his best face for other so he will be liked" -- exactly the sort of person whom Ayn Rand would not have liked. Phaedrus is described differently. Gent quotes Pirsig as saying that "Phaedrus was more honest -- he would never compromise, and the young respected him for that."
As I read ZATAOMM again I am struck by Pirsig's descriptions of the act of touring with a motorcycle. He writes about how the best roads are ones that go from nowhere to nowhere and where there's an alternate that will get you there faster. He mentions the roads that dwindle into cowpaths then finally end in some farmer's yard and he describes how riding in a car is like watching the outside go by on TV but that when riding a motorcyle you are *there*, the concrete of the road five inches below your foot.
Something that I do not think I noticed as much before is the plot structure of ZATAOMM; it's a kind of detective story or perhaps a murder mystery in a way. The book begins with us knowing that Phaedrus is dead and then gradually as we progress the reasons for his demise are revealed.
At present I'm at a little less than the half-way point and discussions of the nature of quality are starting to ramp up. This is of special interest to me now as I am, myself, just embarking on the rewrite of some software and am wondering how much quality it would be wise to attempt to inject into the project. There are, after all as the Christian Science Monitor article on Atlas Shrugged pointed out, lots of good reasons to compromise.
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