"Fame" and Technical Writing

One might think that there is no such thing as a “famous” technical writer since most the field’s works are written anonymously and without much fanfare. However, the prominence of one technical writer has challenged this conventional wisdom. He’s Robert Pirsig, the author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’.

Pirsig was a technical writer during much of his early adulthood, and in ‘Zen, one of the book’s major characters, who probably reflects Pirsig in his earlier life, worked as one.

The title is misleading because the book isn’t directly about motorcycle maintenance. It’s more of a subplot. Yet, ‘Zen’ does include some amazingly clear prose describing the details of fixing motorcycles .