R.I.P. Dan Glover – Author of “Lila’s Child”

Writer, sculptor, and photographer Dan Glover passed away unexpectedly on 20 June 2025, as announced by his daughter on social media.

Dan Glover was the author and editor of the seminal work “Lila’s Child: An Inquiry into Quality“, as well as the creator of more than thirty other original works spanning fiction and philosophy. “Lila’s Child” arose from discussions of the “Lila Squad” in the MoQ-Discuss Forum.

In his brief auto-biography, he wrote about Lila’s Child:

“In the late 1990s I was honored to work with Robert M. Pirsig (author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals) which resulted in my first book called Lila’s Child: An Inquiry into Quality. .. Mr. Pirsig shares many insights into his Metaphysics of Quality, which allows for a deeper and more expanded way of understanding reality.”

He also wrote how he came to work on the project in Lila’s Child:

“When Bodvar Skutvik, one of the original members of the [Lila Squad] (who knew of my fondness for the archives), approached me about making an attempt to organize the early Lila Squad discussions into a readable format, my first thought was “He’s got to be joking.” With over a thousand posts in the archives from just the first six months, it seemed like a task that might take years to complete. Bodvar asked me two more times before it dawned on me that he was actually serious and I agreed to take on the challenge. I had grave reservations as to the value of such work but put those thoughts aside with the conviction that taking on any project meant my full attention was called for despite all the misgivings I harbored. The project began in autumn of 1999 by gaining the permission of the contributors, constructing an outline of the posts, and finally uploading a rough draft to a website early following year.”

“When I began the Lila’s Child project I had no idea that Robert Pirsig himself would stumble across the rough draft on the internet several months after I had uploaded it, much less be impressed enough with it to write a letter to Bodvar about it, as I was informed of in the autumn of 2000. I was too close to the work to tell if Lila’s Child had value or not, but this helped confirm my suspicions that perhaps it did. After a return letter from Bodvar, Mr. Pirsig agreed to provide an introduction and annotations for the manuscript. Those annotations are now footnotes at the end of each chapter. In addition, Mr. Pirsig was good enough to answer some questions regarding those annotations. This exchange constitutes the epilogue at the end of the discussions.”

“Over the last three years, I’ve spent countless hours scrutinizing every word, every line, and every nuance in the manuscript. (“If a book is going to be about Quality, it had damned well better be a Quality book.”) There were times when I found it impossible to force myself to turn on the computer, much less to even look at Lila’s Child; other times I found myself driven to put in up to eighteen hours a day for months at a time hammering the manuscript into shape. Yet I’ve played but a small part in the creation of Lila’s Child, almost an invisible part. Actually, in a way Lila’s Child created itself from the idea “seed” that Bodvar planted, blooming when the time was right to rest, regenerating for the next big push.”

“I doubt there will be any more books for me to put together. There’s a Zen saying that work done then forgotten lasts forever. As time is apt to fold into itself, in several months I will barely remember working on Lila’s Child. In a year, it will be as if someone else put the book together. I have no idea what I’ll be doing then, but I am sure it will require all my attention.

Thank you for reading.
Dan Glover
June 23, 2002”

As the bibliography below shows, and Pirsig fans may be surprised to learn, Dan became a prolific writer beyond the Pirsig / Lila project.

Bibliography

Standalone and Other Works
Lila’s Child: An Inquiry into Quality (2002)
Deepening Your Effectiveness: Restructuring the Local Church for Life Transformation (2006)
Peppermint Soul (2015)
The Art of Caring: Zen Stories (2011)
The Mystery: Zen Stories (2012)
Apache Nation (2011)
Water and Stone (2014)
Streets (2015)
There Come a Bad Cloud: Tangled Up Matter and Ghosts (2011)
Thoughts on the 5:58 (2014)

A Gathering of Lovers Series
Billy Austin (2011)
Lisa (2011)
Allison Johns (2012)
Yelena (year unknown)

Liza McNairy Mystery Series
Deadhead (year unknown)
Baja Blues: The Boy Who Played with Marbles (2015)
42 Bucks (2016)

Mermaid Series
Winter’s Mermaid (Book 1) (2013)
Mermaid Spring (Book 2) (2013)
Summer’s Mermaid (Book 3) (2014)
Mermaid Autumn (Book 4) (2015)

Drive Series
Drive: Books 1 to 10 (2017)
Drive: The Novel (2018)

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