A Metaphysics of Crap

I finished Pirsig’s Lila some time ago, but haven’t gotten around to saying anything about it because it wasn’t really good enough to say anything about. The simplest thing that can be said about is this: it is kitsch, and it fails the standard set by Pirsig himself in Zen–it is devoid of Quality, for it claims to be something that it is not and in so doing justly falls into the rubbish heap of groundless philosophically inclined ideas that attempt to build an intellectual edifice out of arbitrarily conceived generalities that in the conceiver’s persuasive opinion are natural agreed upon norms. For some reason I have that children’s song ringing in my ears: the foolish man built his house upon the sand.

If you’d like specific instances of Pirsig’s failure in Lila you need merely ask me to cite them.