Dave t. said:
Months ago someone started a thread asking, Why RMP's philosophy was not
catching on, more popular? I thought it was an interesting question but the
responses were few and the thread died quickly.
dmb says:
I don't even think that is a real question, let alone an interesting one.
Pirsig's first book has sold millions of copies in many different languages and
I don't think I've ever been in a bookstore that didn't have more copies for
sale. In what sense is his work not popular enough? Of all the books that have
ever been published in the world, only a tiny fraction of them have achieved
numbers like that. Only a small fraction have even achieved 10% of those
numbers. In publishing, half a million copies is a huge hit that'll put you on
the New York Times best seller list. Pirsig has sold 5 or 6 million and in the
last few years there two Ph.D. dissertations and two Masters theses have been
written about his work. This means that Pirsig may very well achieve academic
success as well as popular success, despite the fact that he was never got an
advanced degree in the field. No, sorry. The question is based on a premise
that does not comport with reality.
Pirsig's work does, however, attract people with a history of mental illness. I
think the reasons for that are both obvious and understandable. I dare say this
forum suffers for it too. At least three different people, including those who
have been asked to leave, have explicitly confessed to such a personal history
of mental illness and I was not terribly surprised at these confessions. It
showed before they confessed.
And besides, all accusations are not equal. Some are valid and some are not.
"I'm rubber and you're glue" is not a valid defense against accusations of
weaseldom. It's just more weaseling on the part of the weasel. Any reader who
actually cares would be able to see the difference.
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