Those Damned Books I Cannot Forget: What Happens When You Read Frank Herbert's Cycle of Dune

"Books are not made to believe but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentaries of the holy books had very clearly in mind."[1]

My favourite authors are Patrick Suskind, for his Perfume, James M. Barrie, for Peter Pan – I am an old child –, Tahar ben Jelloun,[2] Umberto Eco,[3] J.M.G. le Clézio – I have never known his full name, but does it matter?[4] – Michel del Castillo,[5] Arturo Perez-Reverte,[6] and Frank Herbert.
Reading these authors has accompanied my catching up of age throughout the years. Of course there has been plenty of other readings – there was a time for instance when I was devouring Agatha Christie. I have had also some temporary fancy for Dan Brown – who hasn’t? – etc, etc, etc, etc. Yet only* the above authors mean something special to me, sometimes maybe simply because I have read them at the so called ‘wrong age’, but who knows?
Among those I have read too early, from Tahar ben Jelloun I have learned of the importance of sensuality, if you want to understand your feelings. At reading Eco, I have fallen in love with libraries, bookshops, words and erudition for its own sake. With Le Clézio, I have learned of the need of change so as to live. From Michel del Castillo I have learned satirical humour, and that appearances are never, or very rarely only, direct references to reality. From Perez-Reverte, I have learned that the love of books is not equivalent to dislike for mankind, that, in fact, books are written as much for the sake of the art as for the sake of man, and that these two loves combined do not mean that you are a humanly worthless library rat, well on the condition that you respect those who are not as literate as you might be. From Herbert I have learned about politics, religion, technology and the nature of mankind.
As for Barrie, whom I have read at a too mature age, he has taught of the treasure of the innocence of childhood. As for Suskind, his introduction to The Perfume has taught me that even the worst of ugliness can be sublimed into timeless literary gems,[7] if one takes the time, and used the right words for it.
In the above list, two authors stubbornly refuse to let themselves fall into oblivion. Whatever I do, they always came back to my mind, one way or another. These authors are Arturo Perez-Reverte, whose Club Dumas I have read so many times I do not recall how many, and whose chronique in El Pais I religiously read every week, and Frank Herbert about whom I write this note.
Herbert started for me as a teenage obsession. While most of my classmates were making collection of glossy magazine photographs of popstars, my personal quest was with the collect of as many Frank Herbert’s books as possible. They were not an easy to access merchandise. For some time I could not find any. Then one day at browsing a ‘bandes dessinées’ bookshop, science fiction novel section I bumped into ChapterHouse Dune, which I devoured straight away, wondering what the heck was this development of Dune, without Dune any longer, without Fremen, and with a Leto II son of Paul who was called the Tyrant. The weirdest passage was the Garden closing with Marty and Daniel. Still Dune was still there, not in Sheena, but in Duncan, in Murbella, in this universe obsessed with the idea of spice and human perfection and politically controlled religion.
Still I ended up very puzzled by what Dune was according to Chapterhouse by contrast to Dune per se. Also there were many questions to be answered. What happened to Dune? Who was the Tyrant? What happened to my beloved Fremen, Paul, and Chani? To Spice? To the Imperium? In other words finding Chapterhouse led me into an even frenzier search for the other books I was missing.
Despite trying to get them in order, the next one I found was Children of Dune, same shop, Saturday afternoon shopping. Disappointed somewhat: I wanted Dune Messiah. Anyway I start reading. What do I find: Paul blinded by atomics, and gone to the desert, Alia ruling an Imperium of which political stability laid with a religion based on the Missionaria Protectiva, so well presented as completely made up in Dune, Paul’s children, Leto and Ghani, two abominations that did not seem to much to be abominations at all, just gifted children.

A suivre



[1] Quote from U. Eco, The Name of the Rose, in R. J. B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima, xii.
[2] Author of L'Ecrivain public, L'Enfant de sable, La Nuit sacrée, Les Yeux baissés,
Le premier amour est toujours le dernier.
[3] Author to The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum
[4] For his Désert and Printemps et Autres Saisons
[5] For his Mort d’un Poète
[6] Because of his El Club Dumas, very especially, La Table de Flandes, El Maestro de Esgrima, La Piel del Tambor, La Carta Esferica, and La Reina del Sur. He also authors a weekly chronique in El Pais.
[7] The Perfume, by Patrick Suskind, pp.3-4. “In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank o stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheet, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots. The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter, for in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench.”