In Defense of Scooter Libby

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Sunday February 18, 2007 · 8:05 PM PST

2007/02/18 · 20:05

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...

Aster

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Monday February 05, 2007 · 6:31 PM PST

2007/02/05 · 18:31

I heard on the BBC that China is planning large-scale commemorations this year of the The Nanjing Massacre, apparently over the objections of Japanese diplomats. Between 150,000 and 300,000 civilians are thought to have died in "The Rape of Nanking", as it is commonly known, a six-week riot of murder, rape, theft and arson, following the Japanese takeover of Nanjing in December 1937.

For those who don't know WWII history, the Empire of Japan invaded China on July 7, 1937, conducting a bloody campaign across the largely rural country. The invasion would prove to be a dress rehearsal for a larger imperial expansion across the Pacific. Partly because Japan never formally declared war on China, partly because Nanjing and other war crimes in China (and Korea) were left out of the post-war International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and partly because the reports from Nanjing are simply so horrific, a minority of nationalist Japanese have never fully acknowledged the crimes.

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In Defense of Scooter Libby

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