（外文电子版资料）Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.docVIP

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance AN INQUIRY INTO VALUES Robert M. Pirsig Authors Note What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Ze n Buddhist practice. Its not very factual on motorcycles, either. And what is good, Ph?drus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? Part I 1 I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid. When its this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, Im wondering what its going to be like in the afternoon. In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs, heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is an old concrete two-laner that hasnt had much traffic since a four-laner went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air suddenly becomes cooler. Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up again. Im happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles. -- Theres a red-winged blackbird. I whack Chriss knee and point to it. What! he hollers. Blackbird! He says something I dont hear.What? I holler back. He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers up, I