Collage: A Life in Fragments — Ken Smith

The novel was deliberately created. It was and is my contention that our individual lives do not make a story with a defined beginning, middle and end - unless, of course, one begins telling one's life at birth and tells it until death. Rather, our lives, viewed by ourselves, are without shape, without form - we do not know what event/events are important or ultimately significant. We only know, with little certainty, what we feel and what we think happens to us and even that is, of necessity, fragmented. Celine, Beckett, Joyce, Simon, Sarraute are part of my thinking/writing background, as well as Eliot, Pound, Roethke, Corso, Buson and Basheo.