Pirsig, Robert M.

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

ISBN: 0553077376
New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1991. First Edition. Hardcover. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance holds a unique place in modern American culture...now, in Lila, Robert M. Pirsig brings us a new voyage, as mysterious and compelling as the journey in that first life-changing work. Instead of a motorcycle, a cruising sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in. Phaedrus has a most unlikely traveling companion: a woman named Lila, picked up in a riverside bar, who in her desperate sexuality, hostility, and oncoming madness threatens to disrupt his life's work. Lila is the story of their catastrophic-comic encounter and an account of the philosophical crisis Lila provokes in Phaedrus, who has been wrestling for years with his Metaphysics of Quality. For Lila poses in human terms the essential questions: What is good? What role do values play in our lives? How can people disagree so murderously on right and wrong?" (from front & rear flaps) The brooding, kaleidoscopically myriad second great philosophical novel by the legendary American writer Robert M. Pirsig (1928-2017), published 17 years after his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) became an instant decade-defining cult classic. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, first edition, first printing as indicated by number sequence on copyright page. Soon followed by softcover editions & finally by a revised, very limited signed edition, this first hardcover printing is quite scarce. One of the two pillars in the Pirsig canon; a rare & most rewarding collectible. Book in fine condition with moderate-to-significant fading, sunning to margins, edges & corners of blank light-blue paper front & back cover boards; a few short, faint scratches at surfaces of same; very light rubbing to darker-blue cloth spine incl. edges & corners (silver-gilt letters & graphics on spine quite bright & almost completely intact); mild spotting to upper edge of text block; much less at side & lower edges of same (the former untrimmed as issued). Interior very fine with only a few tiny spots at blank paste-downs & endpapers; otherwise substantially mint. Dust jacket fine with mild rubbing & a few short, faint scratches to front, back covers, spine & flaps; a bit of wear & some tiny bumps, creases at thin edges & corners of same; several very faint creases at surface of rear flap. Fine / Fine. [Item #4593]

Price: $60.00