[MD] Pressed Ham

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Platt to SA]
Remember: a contrarian, the catalyst of social change, is an individual.

[Arlo]
Who is dialogically engaged with the collective, indeed, whose agency emerges
from this dialogic intertwining of "individuals" and "collectives".

[Platt]
The very fact that Pirisg chose the novel to explain his philsophy reveals his
testament to the individual. Novels require depictions of flesh and blood human
beings; a doctoral thesis of philosophy or a manifesto does not.

[Arlo]
Perhaps he chose the novel precisely because it IS dialogic, rather than giving
an appearence of monologic dictate (as sounds the thesis and manifesto, even
though, of course, they are not). The novel is inherently narrative, and as
deconstructionists remind us, not just internally narrative (intra-character),
but externally narrative (written as response to, and in anticipation of) the
historically unfolding cultural narrative.

You would think that if Pirsig wanted to highlight the so-called "individual",
he would choose a thesis, where it would be more suggestive that its his voice
and no one elses. As it is, he choose a dialogic medium, where ideas unfold
only through the collective activity of the characters involved. That he wrote
it as part of the external, historical narrative is fairly evident. He himself
says its writing is, in part, a response to critics.