The rise of "Scooter" Libby's profile in the national media has sparked interest in his 1996 book,
The Apprentice: A Novel. Over at
Amazon.com, used copies of the books range in price from $70 to $700 for uninscribed copies to $2,400 for inscribed ones.
Why such intense interest, you ask? Sure, he displayed the unique ability to mix Robert Frost with Tom Clancy in his letters to Judith Miller:
"You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover--Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."
But it seems what sparked everyone's curiosity is not so much Scooter's artistry as his following in the fine tradition of "family value" Republicans, such as his boss' wife, who preach the need for wholesome entertainment and then publish their own brand of smut.
For those of you who don't remember, Lynne Cheney has long been outspoken, especially as Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, for the need to fight against sex and violence in entertainment. Well, I guess she doesn't think novels consititute entertainment because, boy, her 1981 novel,
Sisters, has some pretty risque sappho overtones:
The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.
Holy Mother of God! Not only does she celebrate lesbianism, but she mixes it with Old Testament imagery. What would Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson think?
The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek...
Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.
Okay, I give Lynne credit for avoiding violence. Instead, she advocates man-hating, lesbian communes. I'm not exactly sure what made men so repellent to her. Maybe this photo gives a "little" clue (and no, it is not Photoshoped):
Man, what would Eve and Eve think of that serpent?
(Oh, and did you noticed the bulge between his legs?)
Well, it appears Scooter started with Lynne's literary eroticism and mixed it with Dick's dark side. Apparently, his novel, about "an innkeeper apprentice in a bizarre coming-of-age story set in Japan in 1903" makes Lynne Cheney's novel seem like a Nancy Drew mystery. Let's see what some of the customer reviewers at Amazon.com have to say about the book:
Freeps? More like FREAKS! -Why are the right wing types so into bizarre sex?
Ick - Why is it necessary for "authors" to go to such lengths to shock the reader? Did the pornography in this book add to the plot? No. This guy gives Laurell K. Hamilton a run for her money in the porn without plot department.
Another example of our leadership's past perversions - Just like George Bush, who was once a drunk party animal, Libby shows his seedy past also. Of course they have all found God now and they lead our country. This scares me. Not as riveting as My Pet Goat.
I wish there were a "no star" option -I don't have a problem with people writing or reading porn, but there is a HUGE problem with this guy writing about little girls who get systematically raped by animals to harden them up for a life of prostitution. Is this what he thinks about? It has to be. He put way too much thought and detail into how girls got raped and controlled. It's disgusting and its wrong. I want to see how the party of "family values" will react to this and I hope they condemn him. He should be ostracized from any political and religious organizations.
My, oh, my! What in the world could have provoked such outrage? According to the Website Nerve, the book includes:
- a scene of incest between two uncles and their niece;
- a hunter asking his companions if they should fuck a freshly killed deer while it's still warm;
- the description of a prepubescent girl's painted "mound" and pleasing lack of vaginal odor;
- a story about a girl who's kept in a cage and raped by a bear to train her to become a prostitute.
And a
New Yorker article says the following:
Libby does not shy from the scatological.
The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, "turds," armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, "At length he walked around to the deer's head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer's nostrils."
Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the "mound" of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a "pink underlip," arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an "assistant headman" who comes to restore order after a crime at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical? And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant headman or the assistant headman's assistant?)
Not to worry, dear readers, after those teasers, don't think I'll hold back on disseminating some of the more choice passages from this season's hottest tome. Judge Scooter's literary skills yourself:
A dozen guests sat in the main room by the edge of the firepit. Their heads were bent low and they held things to the light. When the youth drew near he saw that they held near their faces cards of lacquered paper and that other cards lay scattered about their feet and others till passed among them hand to hand.
On the cards were painted pictures of naked women bathing and lovers engaged in odd, exotic practices and on some were monkeys with erections and on one a demon and a maid. The top card, facing outward, bore a half-dressed courtesan and a warrior, reversed upon each other, garments hitched to their waists, with swollen, oversized organs and impossibly reddened flesh, and behind her back the courtesan held a dagger and there were scratchings on the card that bore urgent words . . .
He said that boys from the village took the merchant's daughter places, and word spread that she had many lovers. There were odd tales of her sexual prowess, and they said she had coupled with dogs and men and several of the boys at once. Then to their village came a young samurai, who spotted the girl as all did, and she folded him into her. She took other lovers in the village, which enraged him, but he would not be done with her . . .
The young samurai's mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white.
Stories of this north-country training for prostitutes were apparently well-known among the guests, who made impatient motions for Ueda to continue . . . "Then," Ueda said, "they trained the young whore in all of the finest ways to pleasure men. They gave her wooden penises and taught her how to handle them. They taught her how to sing out in the night and move to finish off her customers more quickly." . . .
"They taught her how to draw pubic hair on her mound," Ueda laughed, "because she was still too young to have any of her own." A fat woman on the far side of the fire laughed out until tears streamed down her face and her sides rocked. She reached into her clothes while she was laughing and pulled sharply and made a little cry and her mouth opened and then, laughing harder, she pulled her hand out with pubic hairs stuck between her swollen fingers and flung them at the men around the fire. "No ink here," she gasped, laughing, "No ink, no ink" and the laughing men beside her made grasping motions above the fire as if to catch the pubic hair she had thrown. Some clung unnoticed in her moist palm.
"And then," Ueda said, laughing and shouting over the others' laughter, "when she was twelve and ready they gave her to me for the first night, because I had done this for them before."
The others stopped laughing in a series of diminishing gasps and leaned forward intently with glinting eyes to hear the secrets of a man used for first-night training by a house that could afford a bear.
"Is there feeling?" a bucktoothed man asked. "At least on the first night, after a bear?"
(p. 78-82)
Damn! Who would have guessed Libby would be into bestaility? Well, this long lost picture shows these weren't mere fantasies for Scooter:
SCOOTER'S AMPHIBIOUS LOVE
How do Republican lawmakers defend such stuff? Remember when Sen. Tom "Fags Threaten Freedom" Coburn was a Representative and he criticized NBC for airing an uncut version of Schindler's List and taking network television "to an all-time low, with full frontal nudity, violence and profanity being shown in our homes.'' I want Chris Matthews or Tim Russert to ask him what he thinks about this book. What about Sen. Santorum and Cornyn, who equated gay marriage to marriage between man and animal?
Tell me, gentlemen and Lynne, what do have to say about Scooter's excellent literary adventure?
What's that I hear? Hmmm, crickets chirping.