The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato

Upon hearing that I was mourning the death of Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a friend recommended this book: The Drunken  Spelunker’s Guide to Plato, as a means to read something similar and somehow re-igniting my memories of a philosophical work that changed my life. While this book is excellent in its own right, it isn’t ZAMM.

I must say that I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, mainly because Kathy Giuffre, while a very good writer, had a hard time setting the stage for herself. I struggled with the characters as they were introduced. I had a hard time staying interested since the characters did not grip me at the very beginning, and she introduced so many of them at once that I kept sneaking back to figure out which characters she was talking about. But. She more than made up for it as  she found her groove about half way through the book. The characters became real to me and as the narrative moved along, I started to empathize with the quirkiness of all the characters,

The structure of the book is ambitious. The author interweaves the story of Josie, the narrator, and her life as a bartender at The Cave, a dark and subterranean watering hole; a contemplation of Plato’s fable of prisoners in a cave; and finally a mixture of Greek mythological tales. At first the whole structure seemed to be a pseudo-intellectual exercise in pomposity. But the tapestry works, mainly because of the author’s sense of humor and her easiness with the language and her way with the story. She easily weaves in and out of the three threads and is able to make the story illustrate the mythology and the philosophical ponderings. I found myself being drawn in to the book as the story became more interesting until I was completely captivated and charmed.  In the wrong hands, the easy parallel drawn between Plato’s cave and the bar named the Cave could have been a disaster.  A lazy writer would have gone for the facile laughs and false profundity; this author never went for the cheap laugh or the fake gravitas. She worked pretty hard, in her research on philosophy and mythology to give us, the reader, a very happy and satisfying read.

The best compliment I can pay a work of fiction is that I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of a book because I wanted the story to continue and I wanted to be led by the author through her thoughts.

I was sad and forlorn when I reached the end of this book.