Apparently Scooter Libby is the author of a hard-core pornographic novel, published in 1996 and entitled "The Apprentice." Its all in a piece by Lauren Collins in the Talk of the Town section of the latest
New Yorker. The book itself is available online from
Amazon.
Apparently his mash note to Judith Miller only scratched the surface of Libby's literary talents. Consider this gem:
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.
more...
The article places Libby in the context of the larger literary movement of which he is part:
Libby has a lot to live up to as a conservative author of erotic fiction. As an article in SPY magazine pointed out in 1988, from Safire ("[She] finally came to him in the bed and shouted `Arragghrrorwr!' in his ear, bit his neck, plunged her head between his legs and devoured him") to Buckley ("I'd rather do this with you than play cards") to Liddy ("T'sa Li froze, her lips still enclosing Rand's glans . . .") to Ehrlichman (" `It felt like a little tongue' ") to O'Reilly ("Okay, Shannon Michaels, off with those pants"), extracurricular creative writing has long been an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast. In one of Lynne Cheney's books, a Republican vice-president dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.
So what are the themes of this product of twenty years of writing?
Like his predecessors, 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?)
But, you might ask, is the book ANY GOOD?
Reviews on Amazon are decidedly mixed.
One reviewer compared it with cinematic and literary greats:
While others have already made remarks on the similarity between the narrative structure of The Apprentice and some of Kurosawa's movies, the combination of a young man finding his way through snow and life amidst a web of intrigues also brought Eco's "Name of the Rose" to mind.
But another complained,
This otherwise played out story had bear rape. As a bear raper I can say that the idea of turning the tables was quite erotic. But then there was no more animal rape.. what up with that?
You be the judge.