[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[Andre Broersen]

Mary to Andre:

I've said elsewhere I think that Pirsig's conception of the MoQ was the product of a high Quality thought process that's founded on SOM. In the beginning, at least, he used SOM to defeat itself.

Andre:
I am sorry to drag this up again Mary, but I think you have got this from Bodvar.
'Quality became a pivotal term for personal historical reasons- it resulted from the flow of events that occurred in Bozeman, Montana, as documented in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Quality was adopted dynamically. The term itself had high Quality. I just felt 'Quality'had quality the way the students just 'felt'some student papers were better than others. I used to give students the advice, 'First you just 'see' what has quality, then you figure out why. Don't reverse the process, or you will get all confused'. It is important to restate this now to avoid the perennial literary critics'trap of thinking that the pivotal term quality is the result of some rational, analyzable process' (Mr. Pirsig in Anthony's Textbook, p23)

Further more, consider how Phaedrus describes the 'growth'of the MOQ:

'It was fascinating to watch this thing grow. No one that he knew had ever written a whole mataphysics before and there were no rules for doing it and no way of predicting how it would progress'.

Remember Phaedrus had written everything down on slips and he has purposefully tried to order them 'organizing and reorganizing so many times  become dizzy trying to fit them all together. He'd just about given up...now the main purpose of the slips was not to help him remember anything. It was to help him to forget it. That sounded contradictory but the purpose was to keep his head empty, to put all his ideas of the past four years on that pilot berth where he didn't have to think of them.That was what he wanted.'(LILA Chapter 2).

Need Mr. Pirsig say more? Bodvar does not accept this. No, it must be out of SOM (to reinforce his interpretation of his intellectual level)!

The MOQ chose itself. It was no product of 'high quality thought' as you would have it Mary. It was arrived at Dynamically!

And, may I add in parenthesis that this is only one of Bodvar's multitude of misinterpretations and misunderstandings!

For what it is worth.