[MD] Definitions.

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 3:50 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Arlo said:
> Or they read LILA and saw Lila as the hero and Phaedrus as the enemy, rather than the dialogue between them, and are stuck in Lila's assessment of Phaedrus-as-intellect as "A big phony smokestack. That's exactly what he is. He thinks he's so smart. It's all over his face. And he's not smart. He's stupid. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't even know what a hustler is. He doesn't even know how stupid he is." (LILA).
>
> Dave Thomas replied:
> Why would Pirsig, the author, put this kind of line in there? Could it just be that he was a little more aware of his biases.  That he was a "left brained kind of guy" with little direct experience with the Zen, holistic, context,  right side. Maybe as caution to others with the same bias to be aware of that condition.
>
>
> dmb says:
> I think you have it backwards, Dave. Lila, the character, is obviously not giving us an accurate report about Phaedrus. Her contemptuous attitude toward him is only consistent with HER character and personality. She's a wash-up prostitute with very little social quality and no intellectual quality at all. She's not capable of understanding him or his world. She's a woman a very low self-esteem and she's lashing out in anger. She's calling him stupid (170 I.Q.) is a projection of sorts. His intelligence makes her feel stupid and she hates him for that. "He doesn't even know what a hustler is," she says, as if intelligence were about familiarity with crime, vice, and sin in the dirty piss-soaked  streets of New York. Her perspective is very limited by her ignorance and distorted by her mental illness. That's what these lines of dialogue show. She's the title character but she's nobody's hero.

Dan:
I think this goes a little deeper, Dave. Remember, Lila IS the author.
I asked Mr Pirsig about this once:

DG:
Rigel seems representative of the negative quality that celebrity
brings in its wake. I get the feeling that the character of Rigel was
modeled after more than one person?
RMP:
No Rigel is just me, setting the stage for the MOQ. I tried to think
of the best attack I could make and then put it in his mouth. One
interviewer asked me, “Are you really Phædrus?” The answer was, “Yes I
really am Phædrus. I also really am Richard Rigel. I also really am
Lila. I also really am the boat.”

Dan comments:
What this says to me is, Robert Pirsig is (in a way) projecting
himself into these characters to a) illuminate the differences between
the biological (Lila) the social (Rigel) and the intellectual
(Phaedrus) levels and b) to create a kind of tension in the narrative
which helps the story along.
Lila is portrayed in the way she is to help flesh out the
characteristics of someone caught in a biological web of love, hatred,
jealousy, envy, lust, etc. She attacks Phaedrus and his 'intellect'
not because she doesn't understand it, but because she understands it
all too well. She's been looked down upon her whole life.
Rigel is the moralist. He wants to save everyone from themselves,
including Phaedrus. Even though he attacks 'the great author' at
breakfast, his objective is not to harm him but rather to tell him
about Lila and the kind of woman he is allowing himself to become
involved with. Of course there is Rigel's background with Lila to take
into consideration as well.
Still, on a deeper level, Robert Pirsig really IS all these
characters, as well as the boat, the Hudson river, the ocean itself.
The story line of Lila is one of going from slavery (being stuck in a
lock going down the St Lawrence sea way to the Hudson (and stuck with
Lila) to death (Lila's insanity) to finally arriving at the ocean,
where slavery and death give way to freedom after going through the
ritual of 'burying' Lila's doll.
The characters all mirror this story line. Lila retreats into a
biological shell; Rigel becomes responsible for Lila; Phaedrus is
finally set free. Now, to say Lila is nobody's hero is to disregard
this progression which mirrors life itself. Lila may seem like a
low-life alcoholic loser prostitute glomming onto any port in storm,
but in fact (as Phaedrus says) she is the one moral lesson of the
whole story. She is in many ways the only real hero.

Anyway, just an observation,

Dan

http://www.danglover.com