From: John Beasley (beasley@austarnet.com.au)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 02:29:24 BST
Hi Sam,
I greatly enjoyed your response to Platt and Matt, which seemed to me to be
particularly balanced and reasonable. I learnt something from your
comparison of ZMM with Lila, as I would have been quick to accede to the
suggestion that "any attempt to develop an organised reason around an
undefined quality defeats its own purpose" applies to Lila. I think your
comments were very perceptive.
I also liked your argument discriminating some absolute 'truth' from "an
accurate articulation of the authorial viewpoint." I agree that the latter
is both possible and desirable.
I have just started reading some Rorty, and some of the critiques on his
position. I'll write more on this at some other time.
But to get to your interesting question.
SAM: "my question is this: What is Lila for?"
The glib answer, which has been put in this forum before, is that Lila
represents biological quality, Rigel social quality, and Phaedrus
intellectual quality. I suspect that this is Pirsig's intention, and its an
elegant way to flesh out the three levels of quality he identifies that
apply to humankind.
Perhaps this is a reason why a number of women have found the novel
off-putting and distasteful.
The issue of woman as the judge, who chooses whom she will mate with largely
from a biological standpoint, is raised in Ch 15, and is left unresolved.
Indeed, the close of part 1 of the book is particularly untidy, and
disssolves into a sick 'hangover' where the issue seems to be whether it is
possible to have both intellectual quality and biological quality. Pirsig
sees this in terms of the divisions he has already established between the
different realms of quality, represented by the cells at the biological
level, and the mind at the intellectual level. From the way he wallows
through this issue, I suspect he really has nothing coherent to say. But I
think it does indicate that contrary to what you say about his using the
MOQ provisionally, he has been snared by his own metaphysics into an
exploration of an interface between levels that actually goes nowhere. And
in my mind this is one of the reasons that Lila the character is somehow
unconvincing and 'shallow'.
The obsession with mental illness is seemingly a constant with Pirsig, and
why not? The doll and the idol allow him to explore further the parallels
between mental illness and genius, or at least dynamic quality in full
flight. But again this raises more issues than it resolves. It is as though
Pirsig keeps getting drawn back to these somewhat obsessive issues, but the
key to any real clarification seems constantly to elude him.
My own view is that this connects with his obsessive skill with logic and
intellect. (See his postscript to ZMM on this.) His whole attempt to create
a metaphysics is, as he acknowledges, in mystical terms a nonsense. While he
has created an impressive MOQ, it is just where the whole enterprise comes
unstuck that we sense these unanswered questions. As I see it, the
enterprise is doomed, but so skilfully presented that it sucks us in.
However the loose ends can't be tucked in neatly enough to escape our
detection, and so we feel an uncomfortable 'dis-ease' with aspects of the
book. I would also include the appalling segments on ruthless destruction of
germs, which Platt so loves, and the Giant that consumes us for some bigger
end, which smells of fascism, plus my favourite, which everyone loves to
ignore, where he trashes the moral values of American Indians in favour of
'urban adjustment'. (Ch 22)
I think a thesis could be developed that we are looking at an intellect at
war with heavily repressed emotion.
Regards,
John B
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