Dave Barry on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

From Ronald Shwartz's For the Love of Books which includes an essay by humorist and author Dave Barry about his favorite readings.

Another book, which everyone was reading in the seventies, was Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I remember reading it and thinking "This explains everything, the whole universe, or at least where human beings fit in and how you should live your life." But I could only remember it for about two days. I remember thinking "Boy, I could go take apart a transmission and put it back together and it would work." But I never did it. So, I'm not sure sometimes whether books change your life so much as, every now and then, one comes along that perfectly reinforces the way you already think. That was an example of a book that I thought was going to change my life, and I still think it was a wonderfully written book, but I can't for the life of me remember what the point of it was. I don't really retain what I read, I just love the process of reading.