New Pirsig Biographical Detail

I’ve been sitting on some overdue additions to my Pirsig timeline since the Guardian interview in November 2006 had Pirsig freely discussing much new information in public. However I was alerted by Mark Richardson to a significant error – the subject of an inconsistency I had originally queried with Pirsig – concerning the dates of the moves to teaching in Bozeman (1959) and then to the University of Chicago (1961), where his breakdown became total. Perhaps not surprising that the man’s own recollections of this period were inexact. Anyway, timeline now corrected.

More interesting and important news for Pirsig fans, is that Mark Richardson has a book of his own in the pipeline, worked around his own experience of the ZMM route by motorcycle, in which he has also gathered much more new journalistically-researched biographical detail well beyond the scope of my simple timeline.

Good luck with the publication Mark.

4 thoughts on “New Pirsig Biographical Detail”

  1. Hi Ian!
    Just thought I’d point out that in the updated timeline, it says the interview given by Julian Baggini appeared in Philosophy Today. It actually appeared in Philosophers’ Magazine. Perhaps you were thinking of Psychology Today.

  2. By the way, I enjoyed that Pirsig article by Zuckerman in Mother Jones. It reminded me again why I identified with Pirsig so much, years ago.

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