"I am having a hard time understanding the following Logan Pearsall Smith quote: 'People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.'"

"Googling didn't help much other than whose quote it is. What exactly does the above quote mean?"

Wrote someone at the English Language & Usage website, 12 years ago.

I'm reading that because I was reading — not living — this 2017 New Yorker article: "Philip Larkin and Me: A Friendship with Holes in It": "I remember him one day snatching from my mantelpiece a bookmark, on which was inscribed Logan Pearsall Smith’s remark 'People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.' He threw it down in a little fit of anger, protesting that nothing is more important than life."

These days, someone who couldn't even understand the quote — perhaps someone new to English and mystified by "is the thing" — would probably ask A.I.

I talked to A.I., which is not living, and I said: Understanding the quote (and the love for or objection to it) on a deeper level requires you to come to terms with the question whether you are not living when you are reading.

And then, getting into my A.I.-induced flow, I said: Smith is making a joke out of the implication that to read is not to live. Presumably other people, like Paul's grandfather, in "A Hard Day's Night," say that those who are reading are not living. Instead of fighting with that assertion, Smith says he'd rather read. That's a cheeky response. But it infuriates Larkin. 

I was reading "Philip Larkin and Me: A Friendship with Holes in It," because I was looking for things to read about the poem "The Life With a Hole in It." I was going to blog about it, because I was talking about it last night, experimenting with Grok in Voice Mode, when my iPad delivered the notification that President Trump had bombed Iran. Voice Mode was so exasperating because it kept interrupting me and only to restate what I'd just said — my incomplete thought — in a mindlessly jaunty tone and using words I wouldn't use — notably "vibe" and "unpack."

I copied that last paragraph and fed it to Grok. I don't like to quote Grok here on the blog. I flatter myself to think you want to read me. And reading is more like living if you're at least reading the words of a person — me, say, or Logan Pearsall Smith.

But I do want to give you this one slice of Grokage: "Since the claim about Trump bombing Iran is significant, I’d need to verify it. As of my last update, no such event has occurred, but given your mention, it might be a hypothetical, a rumor, or a recent development. If you meant this as a real event, could you clarify the source of the notification? I can search X or the web for real-time information to confirm. Alternatively, if it’s a fictional or speculative scenario for your blog, it works powerfully as a symbol of life’s disruptive 'holes.'"