This is so not fair...

After having Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance recommended to me for years by one person I like and respect, it was recommended by a second person that I like and respect, so I picked it up. I suppose, first off, why is this unfair? Well I'm only about 150 pages into Zen... and I plan on making comparisons to another book that I haven't finished - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And I'm going to pretend to know everything about both books dispite the fact that I'm only about 1/3 of the way through either of them.

The narrative of Zen begins and proceeds through the first couple of chapters in a way very reminiscent of what I was reading in HWoSG. Only not as entertaining. There's some travelling in both. One by a father/son and the other by two brothers... the older of which acts like a father to the younger. I already know, for certain, that HWoSG isn't "On the Road" or anything. It's primary setting isn't inside a car. Or on a motorcycle. But the relationships b/t the two travellers in each pair were so similar I had a difficult time remembering who was who.

So far, everything I've written has been total crap... My main point was to note the difference in tone of the two books. HWoSG just meanders and winds its way through life seemingly without any grand purpose. Z&AMM comes off as very pretentious and directed. In something like Ishmael, I felt like that approach was ok due to the fantastic nature of the narrator. If we were to suspend belief enough to believe that a gorilla was talking to us, it felt pretty natural to allow that gorilla to preach. In Zen, it's just a dude. A dude with, so far, no sense of humor and a very high opinion of himself. I definitely plan to finish it, but the more I read, the more I find myself wishing that I was reading about someone else.