Smoking chronicles the courageous subtext of John Mulgan's iconic novel Man Alone. Where many have seen only the solitary exploits of a stoic Kiwi joker, Smoking explores the love of the hero Johnson for his best mate Scott. These two men, caught in the brutally heteronormative regulations of patriarchy, are John Mulgan's subtextual agents of change. Their relationship, although violently repressed, played out against the novel's equal advocacy of an end to the exploitation of women and the indigenous. With a critical foreword by Tracey Slaughter, Man Alone is recognised by Janet Charman as a mythic tragedy in which the full weight of the hero's sexual fury and grief is felt symbolically in the volcanic landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand. .