Dreamer of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  He was between jobs at the time, and a number of bill collectors were hot on his trail. One day, my father vowed, he would pay all the old bills in full, with interest. For the moment, however, they would have to wait.

  Chapter 8

  The South Seas Dream

  WHILE WE stayed with the Vances in California, Dad wasn’t doing much creative writing. For several years, he had been wanting to return to the Northwest, and now he had feelers out for jobs in Washington State and Oregon—either in the newspaper business or other professions that involved writing. To get by, my parents borrowed money from Mom’s Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bing, who lived in nearby Sebastopol, California.

  In the spring of 1954, when Dad was thirty-three years old, he obtained an important job. It was as speech writer for Guy Cordon, a U.S. Senator from Oregon who was running for re-election that year. Cordon chaired the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, with substantial responsibilities in government land-use policy. He also sat on the powerful Senate Appropriations committee and on a number of subcommittees, including Armed Services and Atomic Energy.

  Years before in Burley, Frank Herbert had been influenced by Henry W. Stein, an ex-newspaperman who spoke of the romance of life on a big-city newspaper. Stein also instilled in the boy a passionate interest in politics. Stein had been involved in state and national politics, serving as a presidential elector from the State of Washington.

  Now my father jumped at the opportunity to join Cordon’s staff. This would vault him into elite circles, providing his developing intellect with important insights into the mechanics of national politics—insights that Frank Herbert could use extensively in his writing for years to come.

  Initially he would work in Washington, D.C., with the Senator, but for only a six-week period between early April and the primary election in May. After that, Dad was to return to Portland, Oregon, to handle publicity and other tasks for the re-election campaign. Under those circumstances, it wasn’t practical for us to accompany him to the nation’s capital.

  We packed at fanatical speed to move our household to Portland, and within seventy-two hours everything we owned was ready to go. Then, as always, my parents owned a lot of books, so this made up a great deal of the weight of the shipment. Dad made arrangements for men to come in and carry the items.

  Two days later, with only a few suitcases, we were six hundred miles north in Portland, staying in a hotel. Cordon’s previous speech writer had resigned on short notice, so Dad was needed right away. He only had one day to help Mom find an old house to rent in the city.

  That evening, Mom, Bruce and I accompanied the new political staffer to Portland Airport. My parents kissed, and Mom said to Dad, “Give ’em hell, darling.”

  My mother would not listen to the radio until hours later, when she was certain his plane had landed safely in Washington, D.C.

  A man of ethics with a perfect senatorial attendance record, Guy Cordon had been in office for a decade. Like ex-president Harry S. Truman, his close friend in the other major party, he refused to become obligated to private interests. Since Cordon was chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, oil companies were always trying (without success) to curry favor with him. He was a “nuts and bolts” man, a technician who cared more about substance than politics. Many times he avoided publicity. My father would grow to respect him very much.

  In a magazine article, Frank Herbert wrote:

  Senator Cordon carries a full mane of gray hair which lends an air of dignity to a face dominated by a pair of intense, but twinkling eyes. There’s something homespun and basically solid about the Senior Senator from Oregon.

  My parents wrote to one another, but Mom had more time to write than he did. Her letters were more frequent and longer. One thing was common to all of their correspondence: They spoke of how much they missed one another, how much they ached to be together again.

  Each evening my mother liked to read, or would knit while listening to Fulton Lewis, Jr., or Paul Harvey on the radio. The oil furnace didn’t heat the house enough for her, so she liked to bundle up in an afghan and sit by a cozy fire. She read murder mysteries, historical accounts and, increasingly, books about politics. She was fascinated by biographies of American political leaders, including Eisenhower and Stevenson, and analyses of events that led to the first and second world wars.

  In April and May 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings were in full swing in Washington, D.C. Radio broadcasts began at 2:00 P.M. Portland time, and Mom listened to every moment of them.

  She was a fine seamstress, and using a sewing machine borrowed from Babe, she made curtains for the house, along with her own slacks, shorts, blouses, skirts, and dresses. She also knitted sweaters for Dad.

  In every way possible, she wanted to help Dad on the Cordon campaign, either with advice based upon her political researches or through other campaign-related tasks that he needed completed in Oregon. She was always volunteering to do things for him, and he very much appreciated it. She located news accounts from papers all over Oregon about Democrat Richard Neuberger, who would probably be Cordon’s opponent for the senate seat after the May primaries.

  Using all available information on Neuberger, my father then prepared speeches and press releases that attacked the opponent’s positions on a variety of issues.

  Public opinion polls came in showing Neuberger doing too well, and as panic set in on the Cordon staff, some of them discussed tactics that could only be classified as dirty politics. My father refused to participate in any of those schemes, and instead recommended a course of direct confrontation with Neuberger on the issues. Cordon followed this advice, but seemed uncomfortable campaigning. With his aversion to publicity, his accomplishments and messages did not always reach the attention of the voters. Cordon had done a great deal to promote the interests of Oregon labor, for example, by saving a Columbia River dam construction project in committee, but few people outside of the U.S. Senate ever learned about it.

  Frank Herbert had taken on a formidable task, attempting to publicize a man who would not blow his own horn, a man who was widely respected by his peers in the U.S. Senate, but not well-known in his own state. In two earlier U.S. Senate elections, Cordon had won easily against weak Democratic opponents. Now, in Neuberger, he faced a former state senator and published writer who was easily recognized in Oregon. His wife, state legislator Maurine Neuberger, aided his cause with her own personal popularity, having been a champion of consumer protection issues.*

  In a very real sense, Mom missed Dad so terribly that she tried to keep herself busy while he was gone. She was always asking him on the telephone and in letters when he would be home, and telling him she was keeping the home fires burning. Whenever the phone rang, she ran for it, hoping it was him, hoping he would surprise her with a call from Portland Airport. Whenever she heard footsteps on the front porch, she thought they might be his. When they spoke on the phone, I sometimes saw tears in her eyes, and as they closed she often said to him in Spanish, “Adios, mi amor.” (“Good-bye, my love.”)

  Dad, who was living in a five-dollar-a-day room at the historic Mayflower Hotel, missed her just as much. As days away from her passed, he wrote in a letter home that he had been singing the words from a popular song to himself, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

  They counted the days remaining until my father would come home.

  While in Washington, D.C., he obtained a pass through Senator Cordon’s office and attended a number of the Army-McCarthy hearings. Dad sat in the Senate reserved gallery amidst much security, since five members of Congress had been wounded a short time before by Puerto Rican separatists who fired pistols from a spectators’ gallery.

  Senator Cordon had been criticized by Neuberger for not coming out against Senator Joseph McCarthy, and this was hurting Cordon’s campaign, dropping him in the polls. To counter this, Frank Herbert was sitting in on the hearings, obtaining information that Cordon might use to advantage.
Cordon, former Oregon State Commander of the American Legion, was strongly pro-military, and concurred with many of McCarthy’s publicly expressed positions. But troubling bits of information were reaching Cordon’s ears concerning the methods of the Senator from Wisconsin.

  On his maternal side, Frank Herbert was a McCarthy himself, with many relatives in Senator McCarthy’s home state, including the famous red-baiter himself, who was a distant cousin. Dad referred to him as “Cousin Joe,” and on one occasion they met in the nation’s capital, at a cocktail party.

  After initially keeping an open mind about McCarthy, Dad was appalled to learn about blacklisting methods the Senator used to prevent suspected Communists and “Communist sympathizers” from working in their chosen professions—particularly since this was often based upon scant evidence. Frank Herbert, like McCarthy, felt the leadership of the Soviet Union was psychotic enough to start a nuclear war, but believed McCarthy had gone too far in his zeal and paranoia, to the point where he was endangering essential freedoms of the people of the United States. Here my father drew the line, for he was a great believer in the Constitution of this nation—particularly in the rights of individuals. After consideration he recommended that Cordon make a strong statement against McCarthy, which Cordon did. But he didn’t do it until the hearings were almost over, which Neuberger used against him.

  At the hearings, Dad saw Robert F. Kennedy working as an aide to Senator McCarthy, talking in hushed tones with the Senator, doing the Senator’s bidding, constantly at his side. This, when added to RFK’s later position in support of federal wiretapping, branded him as a dangerous politician in my father’s opinion—as a politician, who, like Senator McCarthy, would not hesitate to trample on human rights for the sake of a pet cause.

  In the Dune series, which would begin in serial form in 1963, Dad wrote extensively about the abuses of power by leaders. These were opinions based, in large degree, upon his experiences in Washington, D.C. Another reflection of this time can be found in the short story “Committee of the Whole,” which would appear in the April 1965 issue of Galaxy. In that story, Frank Herbert described, in highly cynical terms, the workings of a Senate committee.

  Dad worked for Senator Cordon in Room 130A of the Senate Office Building. The building was commonly referred to as the “S.O.B.” And Cordon’s “big office,” as staffers called it, was Room 333.

  My father’s days were long, often from early in the morning until midnight. Almost every day he had breakfast in the S.O.B. dining room, usually a poached egg on unbuttered wheat toast, a half grapefruit without sugar and two cups of black coffee. He read three newspapers with breakfast—The Washington Post, The New York Times, and, in great detail, The Congressional Record. He scanned for items of interest and read quickly—a style of research that would be beneficial to him during his long writing career.

  After breakfast he liked to take a constitutional around the Capitol Building, and shortly before 8:30 A.M. he always reported to Room 130A. Dad was much more than a speech writer to the Senator. Each morning after organizing his papers, Dad went up to the third floor to consult with Robert Parkman (Senator Cordon’s administrative assistant) on promotional projects for the day. Then he went back downstairs and worked on speeches, political letters and news stories about the Senator, for release to the press.

  Speech writing took up most of his time and involved many rewrites. He worked on this for most of each morning and often into the early part of the afternoon. At least four lunches each week were with important people, including Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, a friend and supporter of Cordon. Frank Herbert knew McKay from years earlier in Salem, Oregon, when the younger man had been a reporter and McKay had been a state senator. Other lunches and important meetings were with research directors at the Defense Department (for the Army Corps of Engineers), with National Archives people, with Senator Margaret Chase Smith (whom Dad admired), and with Jack Martin, press secretary to President Eisenhower—all to obtain assistance for the Cordon campaign.

  From mid-afternoon to 6:00 P.M., Dad could invariably be found in the Library of Congress, in what he called his “second office.” That was Study Room 249 in the Library of Congress Annex. The little room came equipped with telephone extension 807, where he could always be reached if someone needed him right away.

  Usually he took his portable Remington typewriter into that office. With piles of books and periodicals all around, he researched and wrote speeches, political letters and press releases. To add spice to the Senator’s speeches, my father included familiar quotations and anecdotes of famous people, particularly American politicians with a sense of humor, such as Chauncey M. Depew. Depew, renowned as a raconteur and after-dinner speaker, wrote an autobiography, My Memories of Eighty Years, which Dad referred to often.

  The Library of Congress, in two huge buildings by the Capitol, was the largest reference facility in the nation, with more than thirty-three million documents. As a senatorial staffer, Frank Herbert had C-9 security clearance. This permitted him access to the Legislative Reference Service, through which he could use virtually any document or book in the library. He just got on the telephone, ordered what he wanted, and presently it arrived in a cart, with blue bookmarks designating the pages that were of interest to him. Additional notes were included on material available at other government facilities, such as the National Archives. If Dad wanted any of the material, he just ordered it through the Library of Congress, and presently it was in front of him.

  He had so much research to do, so much studying, that at times he felt like he was cramming for a college examination. In a moment of late-night silliness he wrote to Mom, referring to the library as “the Liberace of Congress.”

  Despite his schedule, remarkably, he found time to write science fiction, and that year a number of his short stories were published. One, “Pack Rat Planet” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1954), was an extrapolation of his experiences in the Library of Congress. It described a huge Galactic Library built into underground chambers that took up almost the entire subsurface of the Earth. All inhabitants of the planet worked in some fashion for the library, and were referred to by the inhabitants of other planets as “pack rats,” tending vast storehouses of useless information. (This was later expanded into the novel Direct Descent, Ace, 1980).

  Dad made friends with Cordon’s secretary, Dorothy Jones, and her husband, Lyle. The Joneses had lived in American Samoa, and were interested in accompanying us to Mexico on another trip. My father was becoming especially obsessed with the idea of living in American Samoa. If he could obtain a government job there, he thought it would leave him plenty of free time to write. So in his spare time he had been putting out feelers, letting people know he wanted to live there with his family.

  Through Cordon, Dad met Stewart French, chief counsel of the Subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs. French, a powerful man in Washington, D.C., became a personal friend and invited Frank Herbert to his home on a number of occasions. French promised to help Dad obtain an appointment in American Samoa after the U.S. elections were concluded. Since U.S. territories were administered by the Department of the Interior, Dad also told Secretary of the Interior McKay of his interest. McKay said he would do what he could, again after the re-election of Cordon.

  My mother was at first hesitant at the prospect of going to Samoa. She felt Dad should concentrate on the Cordon campaign and worry about future assignments afterward. Gradually, though, she came around to his way of thinking. She liked warm climates, and Portland was decidedly on the cool side much of the time.

  During his stay in the nation’s capital, Dad made a train trip to New York City, his first visit there. As he wandered around in the forest of buildings, staring upward, he felt like a country bumpkin. He stayed at the Biltmore Hotel on Madison Avenue, and met his literary agent, Lurton Blassingame, for the first time. Lurton was a thin man who looked like an Oxford professor. Meeting Lurton was not, however,
the principal purpose of Dad’s trip, which was made on behalf of the Cordon re-election committee.

  On the top floor of a New York City office building, Dad tried to convince Paul Smith, board chairman of Collier’s magazine, to run an article on Cordon. By prearrangement the article would be written by a well-known writer and former adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ray Moley, who had also promised to write several other newspaper and magazine pieces on behalf of the Senator. Smith made no commitment beyond a promise to watch for the article when it came in, whereupon he would read it himself. It would not have to go through the usual “slush pile” route of unsolicited submissions.

  Frank Herbert saw the slush pile at Collier’s, and found it disquieting. At a later writing workshop recorded by his friend Bill Ransom, Dad said the slush pile was in a large room, dominated by a long table, with big blackboards covering two walls. Mailmen came in pushing large carts full of manuscripts. These submissions were dumped on the table. College students working part-time then sorted the manuscripts, usually distributing them randomly into readers’ boxes. There were messages on the blackboards, and the sorters pulled out anything that particular editors said they were looking for. Some writers were mentioned negatively, with their manuscripts tossed in a rejection sack. Envelopes that looked unprofessional were tossed directly into the rejection sack without being opened. These unfortunate writers would receive form letters, often after long delays.

  When Ray Moley learned that Collier’s wasn’t offering a contract in advance, he refused to write the article. Nothing on speculation, he said. So, prompted by Cordon, Dad took on the writing chore, and set to work on it in the Library of Congress. The completed article, entitled “Undersea Riches for Everybody,” was four thousand words long, a popular length at Collier’s, and described problems of underwater oil and gas exploration on the continental shelf. It outlined Cordon’s position on this issue, and, if published in time, was expected to boost the campaign.