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Salient: An organ of student opinion at Victoria University, Wellington. Vol. 23, No. 4. Wednesday, May 4, 1960

"Smoke"

"Smoke"

"The story was called Smoke. I remember burning it, furtively yet with great relief, some years later. I cannot remember in any detail what it was about: I doubt that it was about anything at all. I have a very clear and very humbling remembrance of the quite incredible badness of the thing—the quite alarming ineptitude. I re member also that it was written at one sitting, from start to finish, and that it was without erasure or deletion of any kind…

"I had behind me, so to speak, an education of a sort … I had behind me the experience of a great many jobs. And I chose to write about Smoke—An abstract consideration of man's destiny—no less. In a manner unsuspected that royal slave was being celebrated again; those Tunisian walls glared White; the square was breaking and the light was blinding. I wrote, that is to say, in reaction to literature—and not to life. I could not connect. Not knowing what was involved in the sort of expression I was attempting; quite unequipped to attempt it; and knowing nothing of the purpose— knowing nothing and having no thought of representing life—I simply turned my back upon the problem and wrote about Smoke