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Not as shattering either in its novelty or emotional impact as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but executing on that formula again as well as it does here, I'm powerless to give anything less than a 5-star rating - I'm just too taken in by Pirsig's shtick. There's nothing quite like being a passenger on the meandering, surprising currents of Phaedrus' thought, no matter how outrageously speculative or unearned his conclusions might feel at times, and savoring the way their path mirrors path of his actual, physical journey (this time, a little more comfortably, on a boat rather than a motorcycle (guess that last book worked out pretty great for him, huh))

It's tempting to catalog the ways in which Lila feels less satisfying than its predecessor, or, frankly, is problematic in ways Zen wasn't necessarily. But then I remind myself that, 40+ years after that book, there's still nothing out there I know of attempting this mix of earnest, accessible philosophizing and urgent, down-to-earth social critique - of making plot *out of* a philosophical idea rather than just inserting it into a plot as subtext for the discerning reader - I can only lament that there aren't more books out there trying to build and improve on his legacy.