John Sutherland (Pirsig Character)

John Sutherland is the traveling companion whose presence in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance makes the classical-romantic split concrete rather than abstract. He rides a BMW R60, a well-engineered and expensive machine, and his relationship with it is purely romantic: the motorcycle is a means to the experience of riding, and the machinery itself is something he wants to remain invisible. When the BMW develops problems, John becomes anxious and irritable. He does not want to understand what is wrong. He wants a professional to fix it so he can return to the experience of riding without having to think about carburetors and valve clearances. Pirsig uses John's attitude as the paradigmatic instance of the romantic mode — not stupid, not lazy, but fundamentally uninterested in underlying form. John sees appearances, surfaces, the immediate quality of experience. The machinery is not part of that experience. It is the condition that makes experience possible, and conditions, in the