of 170 at age 9, Robert Pirsig skipped several grades and was enrolled at the Blake School in Minneapolis.

Pirsig was granted a high school diploma in May 1943, and entered the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry that autumn.

Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army in 1946 and was stationed in South Korea until 1948.

Pirsig discusses this incident in an afterword to subsequent editions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, writing that he and his second wife, Kimball, decided not to abort the child she conceived in 1980, because he had come to believe that this unborn child was a continuation of the life pattern that Chris had occupied.

" Pirsig noted in an early interview, that Zen was rejected 121 times before being accepted by William Morrow Publishers.

In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals ( 1991 ), in which he develops a value-based metaphysics, called Metaphysics of Quality, to replace the subject-object view of reality.

Highway 175 was mentioned as the next to last highway ridden in the classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

Pirsig joked that his co-workers noticed that he was " a lot less perky " than everyone else.

" I asked Pirsig ... he said it was like ' lilac ,' and that, ' it was the unsubtlety of the lilac odour and the hardiness of the bush that helped suggest her name to me.

Robert Maynard Pirsig ( born September 6, 1928 ) is an American writer and philosopher, and author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values ( 1974 ) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals ( 1991 ).

In an example of the classical approach, Pirsig explains to the reader that one must pay continual attention: when the Narrator and his friends came into Miles City, Montana he notices that the " engine idle is loping a little ," a possible indication that the fuel / air mixture is too rich.

Pirsig is capable of seeing the beauty of technology and feels good about mechanical work, where the goal is " to achieve an inner peace of mind ".

Lila is an important idea in the traditional worship of Krishna ( as prankster ) and Shiva ( as dancer ), and has been used by modern writers like Stephen Nachmanovitch, Fritjof Capra, Alan Watts and Robert M. Pirsig.

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals ( 1991 ) is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for his classic text, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Although Pirsig attended graduate studies of Hindu philosophy at Banaras Hindu University and also attended Ramlila celebrations in India, the name of the female character, Lila, is accidental.

' Given the nature of the most famous of texts from both groups, ZAMM, is of the latter nature style of title ( and, rather than in ) one must ask if ZAMM is not a product of the archery text, but rather, an ' unintended ' or ' inadvertent ' ( and unknown to Pirsig during writing and publication

Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Robert M. Pirsig, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare and Nicholas Rescher.

The elder Pirsig served as the law school dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching at UMLS in 1970.

While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited.

Pirsig suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963.

Pirsig has traveled around the Atlantic Ocean by boat, and has resided in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, England and in various places around the United States since 1980.

Robert Pirsig married Nancy Ann James on May 10, 1954.

Pirsig also tries to combine Western and Eastern philosophy.

Pirsig ’ s work in his book Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance analyzes the Rhetoric and Dialectic forms of Philosophies and their implications in the context of modern science and lifestyle.

* Pirsig bio from the American Society of Authors and Writers.

* Zen And Now-Mark Richardson's book contains more Pirsig biographical detail.

* Robert M. Pirsig & Quality

* NPR interviews with Pirsig: Audio: 1974 and Audio: 1992.

de: Robert M. Pirsig

es: Robert M. Pirsig

fr: Robert M. Pirsig

it: Robert M. Pirsig

Heidenstam was born in 1859, of a prosperous family.

Sherlock Holmes, the ancestor of all private eyes, was born during the 1890s.

Henrietta was discovering in the process of writing, as the born writer does, not merely a channel for the discharge of accumulated information but a stimulus to the development of the creative powers of observation, insight and intuition.

She was born Lilian Steichen, her parents immigrants from Luxemburg.

`` My mother read a book right after I was born and there was a Lilian in the book she loved and I became Lilian -- and eventually I became Paula ''.

By now she was sure she was going to have a baby, deciding it would be born in India or Burma that November.

He was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1909.

About the only time the Hetman seemed excited was when one of his own pet ideas was born.

On April 10, 1904, his first child was born, a son named George after the late Senator.

Modern warfare was born in this campaign -- periscopes, camouflage, booby traps, land mines, extended order, trench raids, foxholes, armored cars, night attacks, flares, sharpshooters in trees, interlaced vines and treetops, which were the forerunners of barbed wire, trip wires to thwart a cavalry charge, which presaged the mine trap, and the general use of anesthetics.

Deppy is Despina Messinesi, a long-time member of the Vogue staff who, although born in Boston, was born there of Greek parents.

Samuel Gorton was born at Gorton, England, near the present city of Manchester, about 1592.

Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which he shed, and the death which he suffered after his incarnation??

Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin Mary??

In the judgment of Chief of Staff Scott it was ironic that the draft policy of a Democratic President, aimed at Germany, had to be pushed through the House of Representatives by the ranking minority member of the Military Affairs Committee -- a Republican Jew born in Germany!!

Thus, the Church was born and because of its intrinsic character was soon identified as a conservative institution, determined to resist the forces of change, to identify itself with the political rulers, and to maintain a kind of splendid isolation from the masses.

And she replied, `` I was born in America, but I was conceived in Vienna ''.

I was born angry.

He kept his attacks on Republicanism for partisan campaigns, but that is part of the game he was born to play.