Lewis Libby is not a pornographer, and his 1996 literary novel, The Apprentice, is not pornography. It is a mistake to dismiss the book on such narrow grounds. To do so, in fact, is to ignore the insight it offers into the mind of its ambitious author.
I blame The New Yorker's Lauren Collins for starting this nonsense. Her Talk of the Town piece, posted just three days after Libby's indictment in October 2005, quoted the novel's (purportedly) scandalous passages without considering their particular Japanese context. Collins, recycling a trope from a 1988 Spy Magazine article, assigned Libby to the pantheon of 'dirty' Republican novelists who have penned steamy fictional passages. Making far too much of a few salacious lines, Collins relegated Libby's intricate puzzle plot to the 'bearest' of outlines.
The Apprentice was subsequently mocked, and even condemned, by people who never read it. I am fascinated by the book, however, and suggest it deserves another kind of attention and scrutiny. If you don't mind the plot spoiler (the plot of The Apprentice matters, in fact), join me after the jump...
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