Robert Pirsig wrote the majority of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle while working at his office at Century Publications above Robert's Shoes. He was employed as a technical writer for Honeywell. He would go to sleep at 6pm, then wake to write from 2am to 6am before work. The book combines a discourse on the metaphysics of quality, an examination of America's mainstream/counterculture split and a "real" haunting of personal madness.

ZAMM was published in 1974, after being rejected 121 times (a Guinness World Record for a best-selling book).

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