It's been many years since I read it, but I can still remember the terror of identifying with its hero and his struggle against insanity and alienation. His struggle to create a connection with his son, his deep sense of caring for him and yet not being able to fully reach him.

Pirsig's genius was to get us to identify with its hero Phaedrus, a deeply damaged human being fighting to make sense of his world. Phaedrus is rather clearly an INTP/INTJ personality type, which should only deepen the identification with him by HN readers.

His clear explanations of the scientific method in terms of motorcycle maintenance are a big plus as well, especially for me. I worked for several years repairing electronics and, being a philosophical type, was often struck by how similar the process was to scientific experimentation and theory formation. Great read.

My books:

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand -- A sharp, bitter, and ultimately soaring defense of the individual against the conformity of the compact majority, without the didacticism and moralizing that marred Rand's later novel, Atlas Shrugged.

Ecce Homo, Nietzsche (Kaufmann translation). Nietzsche's last full work, completed days before his descent into insanity. Shatteringly beautiful prose that will rearrange your soul, from one of history's most original (and misunderstood) thinkers. One of history's great fighters against political and cultural correctness. This boy could write.

I have purchased about 5 copies of it over the last 25 years, and I only have one left. The others have been lent out and never returned. I have read it many times. Hence it was a candidate for the list of 2.

For me, I think that I read it at young age (I think around 13) and it had a significant effect on me at an influential time. Re-reading it over the years has recaptured some of the feelings I had when I first read it.

I loved the way that he separated someone who loves what they do and someone who is just twirling spanners. I loved how he dismissed the snobbery of considering things such as programming or technical writing as not creative. For me, it was the only thing I had ever read that said something like that - all around me were people who considered only painting to be creative, and working on a motorcycle to be something that didn't require conscious thought. At the time I was a programmer, and I had a motorcycle that needed maintenance.

Those things may now be self-evident to all, maybe in part due to Pirsig's influence. His book is probably less relevant and harder work to enjoy than it was at the time, like an old movie, but it is an old friend to me.

Some people (many people on this website, I suspect) have a hard time doing a crap job on anything that deserves a good job. They won't allow themselves to iron a shirt badly, or catch and discard an important exception, or park askew. There's things they consider to be important and they do them right every time. When I was young I (wrongly) imagined myself to be one of the few, looking at my peers, so it had a big impact that someone could put this stuff into words.

His refusal to define Quality and his split between Romantic and Classic realities still come back to me when I see large software projects attempting to ensure Quality. They do it by enforcing naming standards and implementing checklists and reviews, but they don't work yet we all know quality when we see it. You can follow CMM to the last letter and still produce crap. CMM (and others) tried to define quality to make it reproducible, but it only comes from the individual and collective minds of the good and great programmers out there. Pirsig was right.

Maybe it's because I had read enough of the "eastern mysticism" nonsense that I just didn't get that book. I still don't understand why so many people love it.