Robert Pirsig was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, and he co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings along with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig.
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Robert Pirsig's father was a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, taught in that school from 1934, served as its dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching there in 1970.
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Robert Pirsig subsequently taught at the William Mitchell College of Law until his retirement in 1993.
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Precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine, Robert Pirsig skipped several grades at the Blake School in Minneapolis.
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In May 1943, Robert Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma at the age of 14 by the University High School, where he had edited the school yearbook, the Bisbilla.
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In 1946, Robert Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in South Korea until 1948.
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Robert Pirsig gives the reader a short summary of the history of philosophy, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle as part of an ongoing dispute between universalists, admitting the existence of universals, and the Sophists, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato.
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Robert Pirsig finds in "Quality" a special significance and common ground between Western and Eastern world views.
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Robert Pirsig pitched the idea for his book to 121 different publishers, sending them a cover letter along with two sample pages, with 22 responding favorably.
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In 1974, Robert Pirsig was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to allow him to write a follow-up, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, in which he developed a value-based metaphysics, Metaphysics of Quality, that challenges our subject–object view of reality.
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Robert Pirsig was vice-president of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center from 1973 to 1975 and served on the board of directors.
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Robert Pirsig had a mental breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963.
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Robert Pirsig received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 for General Nonfiction, which later allowed him to complete his second book.
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Robert Pirsig won an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1979.
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Robert Pirsig had been an instructor in writing at what was then Montana State College from 1958 to 1960.
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Robert Pirsig did not travel to Bozeman in December 2012 to accept the accolade, allegedly due to frailty of health.
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However, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig writes about his time at Montana State College as a less than pleasurable experience, and that this limited his ability to teach writing effectively and to develop his own philosophy and writing.
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In 2020, the Smithsonian acquired additional material from the Robert Pirsig family relating to Robert Pirsig's maritime interests and background.
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