Originally posted by: AdamK47
Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
Holy rip-off of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Batman! Even down to the same conversation about how loose tappets sound similar to piston slap.
ZV
It's a good read either way from whoever wrote it.
Would have been nice to see some acknowledgment on the part of the author though. Especially since the "article" is an excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book. Even moreso given that the very title of that book apes Pirsig's work. Crawford's book will be titled, "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work", the full title of ZMM is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values", and the full title of Pirsig's follow-up to ZMM is, "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals."
This isn't just similar, it's borderline plagiarism unless the book contains an acknowledgment that the excerpt omits. While Crawford does have a slightly different focus (Pirsig sought to illuminate what he termed the "classic/romantic split" while Crawford seems to be aiming at more mundane matters), the fact is that he owes the majority of his foundation to Pirsig's earlier work. His comments about a mechanic internalizing, "the healthy functioning of the motorcycle as an object of passionate concern" might as well be lifted directly from Pirsig's work and Pirsig's drive to eliminate the classic subject/object duality that leads to low-quality work.
On the whole, I get the idea that Crawford doesn't so much want to be a mechanic as he wants to be someone who
writes about being a mechanic. He's not really working with his hands as an end in itself, but rather as a means to be just another one of the "knowledge workers" he talks about in the beginning of the excerpt. There's something in Crawford's writing that strikes me as vaguely disingenuous and I can't put my finger on it more solidly than that.
ZV
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