SOURCE: “Tracing Patterns,” in The New Republic, June 26, 1995, pp. 28-9.

In the following review, Kauffmann offers positive assessment of the film Smoke.

In My Dinner With Andrè, the Shawn-Gregory film of 1981, Andrè tells Wally of his transfiguring experiences in far-off places. Wally replies:

Why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? Is Mount Everest more real than New York? Isn't New York real? I mean, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next to this restaurant, it would blow your brains out.

I can't say if Paul Auster knows these lines, but they could almost serve as epigraph for his screenplay of Smoke (Miramax), except that a cigar store is only one of the important places in the film and, as in Auster novels, the quest is for...