Robert M. Pirsig

Robert Pirsig married Nancy Ann James on May 10, 1954 and they had two sons; Chris and Theodore.

On December 31, 1978, he married Wendy Kimball and they had a daughter, Nell.

He died on April 24, 2017, at the age of 88, at his home in South Berwick, Maine.

Robert Maynard Pirsig was born to Maynard Pirsig and Harriet Marie Sjobeck, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At the tender age of nine, he possessed an exceptional IQ of 170, owing to which he could skip several grades at school. He then studied at Blake School and was granted his high school degree in 1943.

He joined the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry while he was just fifteen but became perplexed by the existence of more than one hypothesis for any given phenomena. As a result, he lost interest in studies, failed grades and was dismissed from the University.

After serving in the U.S Army for a short time, he came back to Seattle and resumed his incomplete college education. In May 1950, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Eastern Philosophy.

He then studied at the Banaras Hindu University to broaden his knowledge in the Eastern philosophy and culture.

In the early 1950s, he travelled to Minnesota, Mexico and Nevada, while simultaneously working as a freelance journalist and technical writer. At this time, he also focused his energies on writing short stories.

From September to December 1953, along with Nancy Ann James, whom he married the following year, he was engaged in co-editing ‘The Ivory Tower’ edition of the ‘Minnesota Daily’, the literary magazine of the University of Minnesota.

In 1955, he got involved in summer humanitarian work for the United Press Service in Minneapolis. The same year, he was also employed to write educational booklets for students in the seventh and eighth grade of school.

In 1956, he was employed on production of marketing educational film for the ‘Minneapolis Grain Exchange’. The same year, he penned articles on R&D for the General Mills Research Labs.

In April 1958, he quit his work at General Mills and received his MA in Journalism. He also became a professor at the Montana State University, where he taught creative writing for the next two years.

‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ was published in 1974. It is a novel on philosophy, based on the author’s 17-day motorcycle ride along with his son. The “cultural bearing” book surprised the author with the sale of 5 million copies as it was rejected 121 times, before it was published by William Morrow Publishers.

In “Lila: An Inquiry into Morals,” the author categorizes Universe under two major divisions, the Static and Dynamic. The underlying themes based on the ‘Metaphysics of Quality’ and anthropology, made this second-instalment worthy of a Pulitzer Prize-nomination.