Robert Pirsig Interview

As long as we're on the topic of self-discovery, did you see the Robert Pirsig interview in The Observer? It's an event, as the 78 year old author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" never does interviews and says this will be his last. It sure seemed like he had some answers when I read ZATAOMM 10 or so years ago, but when someone seems so troubled, it's sometimes hard to distinguish whether he's sane in an insane world or just insane. Hence the appeal, I suppose. From The Observer:

He sits in a hotel room in Boston and tries, not for the first time, to make some sense of his life. He is, he suggests, always in a double bind. 'It is not good to talk about Zen because Zen is nothingness ... If you talk about it you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it no one knows it is there.' Generally, rather than analysing, he says, he would rather 'just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees'. Reclusion has its discontents, however. 'In this country someone who sits around and does that is at the bottom of the ladder, but in Japan, say, someone who goes up into the mountains is accorded great respect.' He pauses, laughs. 'I guess I fall somewhere in between.'