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Fiction

The Very Modern Cosmos of “Dune Messiah”

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Some months ago, I shared with you my thoughts on reading Dune for the first time. You can find those posts by selecting the Dune content tag or asking your erudite. I’ve been reading the second book, Dune Messiah, and I’d like to say a couple things about it.

Herbert’s world appears to be a very modern one. Anything can be engineered to a desired end. Complicated languages and systems have been created and can produce remarkable results–maybe not perfect results according to the grand engineers longing for some utopia, but results that go a long way down that road. You see this in many conversations between characters.

“An attack on my father carries dangers other than the obvious military ones,” Irulan said. “People are beginning to look back on his reign with a certain nostalgia.”

“You’ll go too far one day,” Chani said in her deadly serious Freman voice.

“Enough!” Paul ordered.

Chani isn’t speaking in a serious tone as any of us might, nor is this saying her voice is regularly as serious as death. She’s using a unique Freman manner of speaking that conveys the super seriousness of her intent. Apparently, one never tells a joke in this deadly serious voice–if Freman joke at all–because using this tone ironically could get you killed.

In fact, I don’t think any of the main characters joke. There is a bard-type in the first book who could make people laugh and sing. He doesn’t return in second book. There’s only a dwarf that speaks in riddles half the time–not quite a joker.

The highly scripted use of language parallels the Bene Gesserit technique called the Voice. By pitching their tone of voice and perhaps using select words, the Bene Gesserit are able to verbally strong-arm people. It’s quasi-mystical like many elements of the Dune universe, but it’s also quasi-scientific in a modernist way. Everyone is merely a product of their genetic material, so if you can get a read on them, you can influence them like a punch to the face.

Equal to the mysticism of Dune is the emphasis on eugenics. Paul Atreides himself is the product of generations of genetic engineering designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a gifted ruler who would take control of the empire on behalf of the Bene Gesserit who engineered him. The fact that Paul doesn’t hand them any imperial power angers them and sends them back to their eugenic hope that the next generation will be the one they’ve been waiting for.

Realistically, it’s perverted. The universe isn’t so strictly ordered as modernists want it to be. Many organisms cannot be reduced to ingredients and rearranged to produce the strengths you want. This steps into the territory of conspiracy theorists, where everything can be foreseen and constructed no matter the complexity. It’s jarringly otherworldly.

I wonder if this is the main appeal to Dune fans, this highly ordered, godless universe with a chemical stream of mysticism running through it.

Music

Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord

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“Make Me a Captive, Lord” is an 1890 hymn by Rev. George Matheson of Glasgow, Scotland. The tune was written in 1862 by George William Martin of London.

I’ve copied the words here. This performance skips the third verse.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: Make Me a Captive, Lord →
Publishing, Writing

More Ghostwriting Wanted, More Ghostwriters Needed

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A growing demand for celebrity books has created an increased demand for ghostwriters or collaborators.

Madeleine Morel, a literary agent for ghostwriters, tells Publishers Weekly this type of writing, while still going largely uncredited, has swelled naturally. “A number of writers … have, in the past five to 10 years, turned to ghostwriting as other avenues have dried up—former midlist authors, former long-form journalists whose newspapers or magazines have closed, and former editors who’ve lost jobs to consolidation.”

These collaborators rarely get named on the cover of their book. Perhaps publishers don’t want to break the magic with readers. Publishers want to you to believe you are holding the honest thoughts of one whose face is on the cover. Readers want to hear straight from Alan Cummings, Hayley Mills, Julianna Margulies, or Ron and Clint Howard, not their interpreter, but any of these movie people that I just picked off a list of recent memoirs may not have the skills or time to put together a full book. That’s no smirch on them.

More celebrities appear to be willing to acknowledge one way or another that they needed writing help. Maybe all of society is more willing to acknowledge the little people behind the stars.

Authors, Blogs, Socials

Revisiting Fascism, Dune, blogroll, and Family Bonds

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It’s full strength for fall colors in my area this week, at least on my morning commute when the sunlight is set to Golden Hour status. The same trees don’t look quite as vibrant at noon. I’ve taken a few short videos while driving to or from work and this morning when taking the trash to the dump. I’ve been recording second-long videos this year. It’s been fun, but I’m not sure I’ll do it again next year.

Today, November 13, is Felix Unger day.

Dune: Herbert uses a steady stream of inner dialogue throughout the two Dune novels I’ve read, which is one reason Dune may work better as a book than a movie.

From the new biography on Czesław Miłosz: “In immigrating to the United States, and specifically to California in 1960,” Haven writes, “he thought he was coming to the timeless world of nature. However, Berkeley was about to become a lightning rod for […] the world of change […] and he would be in the thick of it.” (via Books, Inq)

Gene Veith is revisiting his book on contemporary fascism: “The rise of Donald Trump has caused many people to worry about the emergence of a new fascism, but hardly anyone seems aware of what the fascists actually believed.”

Sophia Lee is a solid young reporter with World News Group. She got married during COVID restrictions, which they streamed over Zoom. A virtual wedding ceremony meant her parents met his parents for the first time in August. A month later, her mother-in-law died.

Chocolates and Caramels: With Christmas and other holidays coming up, allow me to link to Monastery Candy “by the contemplative nuns of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa.” They say their hazelnut meltaways are their favorites.

Photo: Diner (American and Korean food), Route 27, Columbus, Georgia 1982. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

Who’s Afraid of Animal Farm?

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Finding herself unable to read more than individual letters, she fetched Muriel.

‘Muriel,’ she said, ‘read me the Fourth Commandment. Does it not say
something about never sleeping in a bed?’

With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out.

‘It says, ’No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,” she announced finally.

I recently read George Orwell’s Animal Farm with some friends. We talked about it for a couple months. I didn’t know going in that I already knew the ending. That nonsense about equality (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”) comes at the end with another scene I sort of remembered. I guess the lack of certainty kept me rooting for a better outcome.

Orwell wrote his fable in the early 40s with Stalin and Trotsky in mind. Trotsky was the Communist idealist who hoped for the workers revolution to sweep the whole world. Stalin was just a dictator. He would have been an abusive mid-level manager in corporate America if he had been born in the States.

In Orwell’s story, Stalin is the pig Napoleon; Trotsky is Snowball. Is Snowball meant to be as pure as the wind-driven snow? Does he have a chance of surviving farm hell? I don’t know. He is the smart one though. He’s the one with vision and plans. The rest of them are lying, thieving pigs who spend so much time gaslighting the other animals that they gaslight themselves.

What is the point of Napoleon telling everyone that one neighboring farmer can’t be trusted one day, the other farmer the next day, and that the traitor they exiled is in league with one or the other of the enemy men week after week? It is either his outsized paranoia, his deliberate gaslighting of everyone he can, or his capricious command and control.

Abusive people can be like that. They change their mind for any reason and force those around them to agree, even if the change makes little difference to anyone. The point isn’t understanding the truth but following the abuser in lockstep. The truth, of course, is whatever the abuser says it is.

How do they teach this book in school and still churn out soft-minded socialists? The animals yearn for freedom, praise themselves for owning their own labor, and yet become more enslaved under pig leadership than they were under human leadership. Maybe teachers join in the gaslighting when this book is discussed. Maybe they explain how Snowball would have been proven right if he had had the chance to succeed; if the animals had just stood up to Napoleon and the other pigs, they could have had their animal-owned and operated farm paradise.

More likely, teachers direct attention to a cult of personality and how Napoleon could be very much like someone else we all disapprove of. Who could that be, children? What larger-than-life personality is a stain to all right-thinking Americans?

A few years ago, a school district in Connecticut pulled Animal Farm from its 8th grade curriculum in strong, socialist style. They didn’t ban it, they said. They have only disapproved it for use. They beat Communist China to the ball by a year.

Bookselling, Non-fiction, Publishing

Black Friday Sales and Wangerin First Editions

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Black Friday has become synonymous with the spirit of Thanksgiving and growing corn by planting fish in the ground. It’s as American as a payday.

The Rabbit Room is holding a Black Friday all month for the sheer joy of it. Of particular interest to our readers may be these first editions of author Walter Wangerin.

Not to be outdone by a warren of artists, Banner of Truth is offering good discounts on many Puritan paperbacks and other fine volumes.

Authors, Religion

Doug Wilson Has Been a Problem for a Long Time

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Pastor and author Douglas Wilson has spilled a lot of words over his lifetime. He has probably been blogging since the 90s, and even without that, he has preached and published bags and bags of words. You could probably pick up any of his solo-authored books and agree with most of it, as you would with many other Christian books.

But Wilson has taken a few hard stands over the years and expressed a few opinions in hard ways. He sees himself as a leader of culture warriors, an anchor point in the middle of a carnival of chaos, catching the wildness of our society and throwing wildness back at it.

According to his piece, I am a “provocateur,” but remember that we live in a time when trigger warnings about everything are most necessary, and this means that we are surrounded by people who are easily provoked. Maybe that’s the real issue. Provocateur, eh? I’ll show you provocateur. Ready? Bruno shouldn’t be allowed to shower with the junior high girls. Buster Keaton shouldn’t have been put in charge of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Men really shouldn’t have sex with unstable women. And there is plenty more where those came from.

Douglas Wilson, Theology Among the Deplorables | Blog & Mablog (dougwils.com), Oct. 13, 2021

I wouldn’t be writing about this if it weren’t for a piece that ran on September 28 on Vice.com. Vice isn’t my go-to for useful news or analysis, but there are too many details reported in this piece to dismiss it as creative writing. This isn’t a humanist simply finding ways to say how weird she finds those Moscow, Idaho-based Christians. This is a report of years of spiritual abuse by many members of Wilson’s congregation and affiliated networks.

In the blog post above, Wilson responds to some of it. He responded to at least one of the big stories in that article years ago; other issues are spelled out on a dedicated page. But these responses are beside the point.

If you read the Vice article–and I can’t recommend it because of the horrific details–you’ll see the problem is largely not Wilson’s particular actions but those of his congregants. Under his direction, they have left the Bride of Christ in the ditch in favor of a campaign against the lost and dying. They have become clanging symbols at best. At worst, they are going into the highways and byways not to invite whoever they find to the Master’s feast but to rob as highwaymen themselves.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Goofing

New Words, Smiles, Blogroll, and Our Man in Havana

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Merriam-Webster added 455 words to their dictionary last month, both new terms and new definitions. Because gets a new meaning as a preposition, “often used in a humorous way to convey vagueness about the exact reasons for something,” as in, “She drove all night because Daryl.” A new word is copypasta, something that has been spread around online.

Also new are deplatform, digital nomad, Oobleck, zero day, fluffernutter, and ghost kitchen. 

Michael De Sapio describes the moral imagination of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, a spy comedy. “Dana Gioia writes that Catholic fiction, contrary to what a secular reader might expect, ‘tends to be comic, rowdy, rude, and even violent.’ This is true of Our Man in Havana, which jostles us through brothels and nightclubs and striptease houses, conveying the dinginess of a decaying city side-by-side with the sanctity of the Church. The comic juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane points up the duality of human nature in the most visceral way possible.”

Speaking of Cuba, playwright Garcia Aguilera, who has been promoted by the government in the past, is now calling for political reform and peaceful protest. He has become what Cuban officials call a “counterrevolutionary.”

“In his Dictionary, Dr. Johnson defines smile as ‘a slight contraction of the face.'” Yeah, but there’s more to it than that.

Allergies of the Gondolier, as told by Damian Balassone
“From the monstrous canals of his nose
a tsunami of mucus arose.”

Marvin Olasky summarizes John Frame’s A History of Western Philosophy and Theology. “In discussing early Christian philosophers, Frame criticizes those who have an insufficient sense of antithesis between Christian and Greek philosophy. Frame states that ‘the attempt to make Christianity intellectually respectable, and therefore easy to believe, is one of the most common and deadly mistakes of Christian apologists and philosophers throughout history.'”

Photo: Texaco gas pumps, Milford, Illinois, 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress.

Fiction, Reviews

Is It Worth Reading the Princess Bride?

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“Look: I would hate to have it on my conscience if we didn’t do a miracle when nice people were involved.”

“You’re a pushy lady,” Max said, but he went back upstairs. “Okay,” he said to the skinny guy, “What’s so special I should bring back out of all the hundreds of people pestering me every day for my miracles this particular fella? And, believe me, it better be worth while.”

A couple years ago, a rumor went around that Sony Pictures wanted to remake The Princess Bride, and many fans respectfully demurred. Remaking it after the pattern of many remakes would produce just another sequel film no one wants to see.

But having read William Goldman’s novel, which is now available in beautifully illustrated hardcover–can you imagine–I could see another movie made from this book. Definitely not a remake of the movie. But another movie based on the book could work if it were done creatively independent from the existing movie.

I’m thinking of something in an artsy style that includes new scenes and probably original material. Maybe the part about dad reading to his son is limited and animated. Inigo’s and Fezzik’s backstories could be told. Prince Humperdink would be a barrel-chested hunter who hated matters of state and enjoyed playing around in his Zoo of Death. There’s enough in the book to do something different with it in a movie–even though while reading the book it’s easy to believe all the best part made it into the existing movie. Goldman did the adaptation himself masterfully.

I think there’s room for a little original material too: another woman to interact with Buttercup and give her some screen time in the castle or before. They could adapt scenes to show how Humperdink noticed her and solicited her hand in marriage like the big jerk he is–no love required. And they could probably insert a Monty Python-style historian toward the end of the first half to comment on Florin and Guilder relations, which of the women alive at the time were known to be uncommonly beautiful, and related innanity.

It would be tough, but I think it could work.

Is the book worth reading? Yes, it is. But if you’ve seen the movie several times already, you may find the book to be a little different.

Goofing

Handy Guide or Opposition Research?

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The ever helpful and occasionally funny Babylon Bee has published a guide to being woke in a world eager to know what that and other new labels mean. Mark Marshall has been equally eager and reviewed the book for his blog.

We can all think of excellent humor writers and comedians who excelled in short formats but flopped in books or movies. Maintaining humor beyond a few pages or a few minutes is no easy task.

In the case of The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, my skepticism was unfounded. Just about every page had me laughing . . . hard. In fact, I alerted friends I was in danger of dying laughing just in case I had a joyous demise.

One example he provides comes from the chapter on making your life as woke as Jesus’s was. He raised Lazarus from the dead to vote for Democrats, and the DNC has followed that example from their beginning.

If this looks like your thing, then I’m sure the Bee’s Guide to Wokeness can be found wherever Babylon Bee merch is sold.