Life's Pleasures Quote by Roy Blount, Jr.

Blount’s joke lands because it punctures a smug little modern faith: that better tools automatically produce better writing. The setup mimics a familiar bit of techno-testimony - “I can write much better with a word processor” - the kind of earnest, self-congratulatory claim that turns a preference into a prophecy. His comeback doesn’t argue; it detonates the premise by yoking word processors to drugs, another “aid” people swear unlocks brilliance. The punchline is less Luddite than diagnostic: humans are eager to outsource talent to whatever is newly available, and even more eager to tell themselves the outsourcing is working.

The subtext is about dependency and self-mythology. A word processor makes drafting easier, yes, but it also makes endless tweaking feel like progress. Drugs can create the illusion of insight while eroding judgment. By pairing them, Blount highlights how both can inflate confidence and flatten discipline. The humor comes from the taboo jump - office technology to narcotics - but the critique is precise: the danger isn’t the tool, it’s the story the user tells about the tool.

Context matters: Blount came up as a working writer in the era when word processors were sold as creativity machines, part of a broader late-20th-century belief that frictionless production equals higher quality. His line is a writer’s way of defending the unglamorous truth: the hard part isn’t typing. It’s thinking, revising with intention, and knowing when you’re not actually getting better - just feeling better.