The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah KilitoTranslated by Robyn CreswellNew Directions, 2010

This slim volume, originally published in French in 1995 as La querelle des images, caught my eye at the library recently, though I hadn’t heard of this book or its author. Kilito, it turns out, is an author of both fiction and literary criticism; he’s Moroccan, and was born in 1945, near the tail end of Morocco’s time as a French protectorate. The stories in this collection are about endings/change, both individual and societial: children becoming adults, cultures shifting. The Author’s Note, which makes me want to read some of Kilito’s critical writing, talks about another central point in these stories: the image, the increasing incursions of the image into Arab culture, image as opposed to text, how an image-driven or image-inundated society is different from one that isn’t. As Kilito puts it: “A culture that proscribes the image, or that pays no attention to it—doesn’t that culture invest itself elsewhere, in words, in texts, in a certain kind of literature?” (3).

When Kilito writes about the image in these stories, he sometimes talks about image-making as a kind of hubris, the image-maker himself as a false god, creating the world at will; one story, “Cinédays,” talks about the the projectionist at the movie theater as a demiurge, bringing the whole world of the movie into being on the screen, or plunging it into nonbeing at his will. Unseen in his little room at the back of the theater, the projectionist holds the time and attention of the moviegoers in his hand. This idea of the “invisible being” appears elsewhere in the book, too, like in “A Season in the Hammam,” where the invisible one, now, is the one who provides (or doesn’t provide) the hot water for the bathers, again, giving or taking away at whim.

But these stories aren’t only about image and text and how they shape our experience of the world; these stories are also full of details of growing up in a particular place and time, details of school life and family life. There’s the instructor at the msid who beats the students on the soles of their feet and the student who stands up to him; there’s a summer camp where the children sing throughout the day, except for those who hate the camp and mouth the words whenever they can get away with it; there are comic books and movies and kisses; there are rats in the streets and the donkey who delivers firewood to the hammam to heat the water for the baths.

I liked this book but feel like I can only write about it very disjointedly; maybe it’s just that it’s my bedtime, or maybe I shouldn’t try to write after a glass of Jam Jar Sweet Shiraz. I recommend John Domini’s review of this book over on bookforum.com if you want a little more coherence.