It made a lot of sense to me as an undergrad philosophy student, reading it shortly after I graduated. IMHO the book is somewhat better if understood as a criti

It made a lot of sense to me as an undergrad philosophy student, reading it shortly after I graduated. IMHO the book is somewhat better if understood as a criticism of the Socratic pursuit of universal Truth if you are familiar with the context. But unfortunately this book is recommended to a general audience, for which I think it is a poor novel. Pirsig did have at least some formal academic knowledge of philosophy though. From Wikipedia [0]: > Pirsig earned a bachelor's degree in 1950 from the University of Minnesota.[8] He then attended Banaras Hindu University in India, to study Eastern philosophy and culture. At the University of Chicago, he performed graduate-level work in philosophy in the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods but he did not obtain a degree there. In 1958 he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Early_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Early_life