Kébir AmmiBen Aïcha

Abstract

necting the discussions to existential issues of mortality, the sacramental, and the metaphysical . Finally, in part 3, we encounter five more essays, two in which Gioia considers the earliest of Christian writers (St. Paul) and the true business of martyrs as witnesses of “uncompromised truth,” and three in which Gioia explores Catholic artists in three other media—painting, sculpture, and music. It’s difficult to convey the rewarding nature of these essays and interviews. Gioia’s mind is teeming with original insight and pertinent but arcane details, things that do not excerpt easily from the contexts in which they arise. Additionally, there are many off-script observations and hints about writing, life, and culture. It’s easier to portray the structure of his arguments. For example, in the title essay, he opines that Catholic writers are increasingly not represented in current poetics. While Catholics themselves (as distinguished from other Christians) number sixty million in the current US population, they are essentially barely represented in the current arena. Why is there no concern for the underrepresentation of nearly one-fourth of our population, he asks, stating, “Some kinds of diversity are evidently more equal than others .” He acknowledges that contemporary culture is secular culture but laments the loss of the spiritual depth, magnitude, and tradition that Christian artists brought to Western art in over two millennia. He talks to us of Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Baudelaire, and many others but then also of more recent writers—in both fiction and poetry—such as James Joyce, Graham Greene, J. R. R. Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, and Czesław Miłosz, to name a few of the most prominent. In our own immediate time, however, he contends that “The retreat of the nation’s largest cultural minority from literary discourse does not make art healthier. Instead, it weakens the dialectic of cultural development. It makes American literature less diverse, less vital, and less representative.” Whether or not the reader initially agrees with the position stated, he or she is likely to be engrossed in Gioia’s wide-ranging argument. This is true of each of these essays and is true of the assertions discovered in the interviews as well. Readers find themselves in the presence of a deeply original and capacious intellect that is unpretentious and direct yet simultaneously concerned with shades of perspective and nuances of thought. Here is another vital book by one of our finest and most original authors. Fred Dings University of South Carolina Kébir Ammi Ben Aïcha Montréal. Mémoire d’encrier. 2019. 166 pages. THE AGE OF Louis XIV conjures images of pomp and splendor, court intrigues and trickeries, loose morals and scabrous adventures, ribaldry and chivalry. In this lawless world, feelings are sacrificed to greed, ambition, or duty. In this exclusive , elitist normalcy, where everyone and everything is an extreme version of itself, life becomes a perilous adventure. Sudden escalations to and plunges from power highlight the caprices of destiny, leaving the characters resigned to their dispossession . Add Barbary pirates, diplomatic negotiations, and hopeless romance, and you have a spiced-up cloak-and-dagger novel. Such is the setting of Kébir Ammi’s latest and ninth novel, Ben Aïcha. In it, he returns to historical fiction to sketch the life of a Moroccan admiral and ambassador sent to France in 1699 to negotiate an agreement about reciprocal prisoner releases. Negotiations become complicated when Ben Aïcha meets the king’s daughter , Marie-Anne de Bourbon, Princess of Conti. Their subsequent clandestine, short-lived love affair goes through the traditional extremes of passion and despair when the weight of royal power crushes the lovers’ dream of freedom. In the background of this tale of rebellion against societal norms, Ammi examines class relations and Christian-Muslim encounters . The bookish Orientalist knowledge of French scholars is echoed by popular cultural prejudice against Mahometans in seventeenth-century France. Ben Aïcha’s observations of France reveal a less than flattering scene. The Muslim world is not ideal either, being wracked by cruelty, poverty , and isolation. Ammi’s modern style and expressions (with the exception of oldfashioned formulas of politeness) bring this dialogue between civilizations into the...