In his part gnomic, part mechanic’s style, Mr. Pirsig’s narrator declares that the real world is a seamless continuum of the material and metaphysical.

Not many weeks before, during the battle for Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, had taken his inspired photograph of the American flag being raised on Mount Suribachi.

On the valley floor, wide enough to admit the more pleasing features of manscaping, the Little River meanders.

Throw a tarpaulin over that woodpile before it gets wet.