my name is mwd

So, I want it made clear that when I started reading this book I didn’t expect it to be about motorbikes much. I guess I was expecting a bit of a travelogue whilst ponding about life book. Which in part, is what ZMM (as it appears to be commonly aberviated) is. What I guess I didn’t expect was huge chunks of… (I’m trying not to swear here, really hard) navel contemplating philosophical stating of mostly abstract obvious or, and I’m sure this says more about me being a closed mind to philosophy than the book, pointless abstract pontificating about nonsense.

The book follows the course of a bike ride by the author and his son. The author used to be an English teacher that got into some very philosophical questions and seemed to have gone mad and been subject to electro shock therapy, and the book represents both the authors thoughts on his past life anda detailed examination of the philosophy, based on the concept of Quality (with a capital q there). And this detailed examination really, really, made me not want to read this book. I guess really what the reader needs to know is that this is a philosophical course text book. But even then I don’t feel I can forgive it. He tries to define things like that feeling you get when things just work, and the understanding you get from working on something a long time, when you not longer have to consciously think about solution. I’m very familiar with these sensations, I get that when I’m coding lots (though, there’s a separate rant about how I’ve not managed to do nearly enough coding in, hell, years, but that’s a rant for another day). The author starts his argument from what I feel is a flawed starting point, which is that no one really knows about these things in science. Certainly I know I’m not alone in finding these sensations when I code, and it may not be documented in scientific technique (I think one might argue that the author, who skipped out his science degree in the first year or so, hadn’t given it time), science, at least in my experience of Maths and theoretical Computer Science admits the existance of a “eureka step” which is close to what the author is initially complaining is missing. Even if he was write though, I think he could have got away with 10% of the pages he used to capture these concepts.

Where I’m more happy to admit I’m not the right person to read the book is in the second half where he follows the notion of Quality (which is just quality capitialised – what makes something “good”) in very abstract terms and using obtuse metaphors such as trains made of classical knowledge, with romantic opinion being the trains leading edge, and the track made from, wait for it…, Quality. Oh god, make it stop. I mean, I don’t think I react well to that type of abstract meta argument when I feel that the premise was kinda obvious, so why are we doing all this? There’s also a whole look at how this, in the author’s opinion, relates to ancient greek philosophy, which just didn’t really engage me as I didn’t know enough about greek philosophy to do it justice.

But overall it was a book I’m very glad has ended, as I can go and read something interesting and possibly even enjoyable. There are bits of ZMM that are interesting, but boy do they not make up for the middle half of the book. I can only assume that it makes a really good book if you’re stoned, which perhaps explains why it was really popular when it came out in the early seventies.

Oh, and if you do insist on reading it, don’t take it as your only book onto a long haul flight, as then there’s no escape. That was the first flight over the atlantic where I’ve been able to sleep – some may say that was the melatonin, but I’m not sure – might equally have been a desperate bid to escape reading more ZMM…