What I Missed In Our Dune Read-Along (+ Tonight's Zoom Link!!)
I Consulted My Favorite Secondary Source On Dune
If Baron Harkonnen is a carnivore, Paul is an omnivore, and his food seeks him. -David M. Miller
During our read-along of Dune in June (and some of July), I decided not to consult any secondary literature so that I could try and form my own, original thoughts on what Frank Herbert was up to in his magnum opus. I actually think it worked! I may have found a connection that hasn’t been studied before, that is the connection between Dune and Plato’s Republic—specifically, that Herbert wrote Dune as a response to the Republic. Philosopher-kings are not something to be sought after all. And just as Plato gave us a philosophical psychology, so Herbert gave us a Jungian psychology with a helping of process philosophy to reply to Plato.
It could be that I read all of this into the text, but go check out my read-along companion essays for my arguments, I think I’m onto something. It could also be that this is a well-studied connection, I haven’t read a ton of secondary literature on Dune. But of the secondary stuff I have read, I think David M. Miller’s short essay on Dune in his Starmont Reader’s Guide to Frank Herbert (5), is the very best. I read Miller’s Starmont Reader’s Guide on Herbert maybe a year and a half ago to two years ago and I was searching for something specific about Dune Messiah at the time, so I didn’t read his Dune essay close enough, but there are some real gems in there. I know for sure that he was the one who put me on to how prominent the bull/matador motif was.
So in this post, I want to share a couple things that Miller noticed in Dune that I missed. I still have a lot of things that I noticed but couldn’t fit into any of the companion essays. So, I’m still going to add a few more posts in the future where I expound on those too.
This post is a bonus post for my paid subscribers because I ran out of time for a third zoom book club session. Our second and final session is tonight at 7pm central. You can find the zoom link just below the paywall and then the things David Miller found and the things I found but couldn’t find a place for below it.
If you want in on tonights book club Zoom call, and our future read-along Zoom calls, as well as access to all of my essays, access to the paid subscriber chat where you can ask me your questions directly, access to my digital intro to philosophy project, my digital commonplace book of wise sayings, my notebook philosophy essays, recorded presentations, old book club recordings, recorded lectures, and more (!), then upgrade to a paid subscription and come join us!
Okay, so here’s the Zoom link: