Dads, daughters, and Dune. As I, like so many, bask in the spice-glow of the newest Dune franchise cinematic gift to us all, I am hearing a lot about a certain generation of us whose Dad’s shared a book, Dune by Frank Herbert, with us and through it we found a story we loved together.
I grew up in houses (my parents divorced when I was 8 years old) where there was one, shared bookshelf. On this, it seems, my parent agreed. The adults put books there and anyone was free to read them. No one supervised our reading, no one told us no, no one noticed. My sister and I read, at probably too young of ages, books like Clan of a Cave Bear, Helter Skelter, and, yes, Dune.
While some of this imagery totally terrified me (scenes from Clan of a Cave Bear where sex is everywhere and purely utilitarian in its descriptions, for example) most of it excited me and drew me in. My Dad, Ron Bonds, had an amazing imagination. He didn’t believe in God. He told me, again at probably too young of an age, that he believed that humanity and all life on planet Earth was someone’s term paper. A thesis. When they were done writing, we’d be done too. So enjoy it, be kind, and soak it all up.
I think I was maybe 10 years old when I read Dune for the first time. Let me be clear, I didn’t read it all at once. This book was available to me when I was with my Dad, at his house or my Grandmother’s house, which was every other weekend if a swim meet didn’t disrupt the schedule which it often did. So, I’d just pick it up, return to the dog eared page, and soak it all up. My Dad’s bookshelf looked like most the decor in a divorced Dad’s apartments in the 1980’s: wooden slats between concrete cinderblocks. Very ad-hoc, like maybe this domestic situation was temporary and any day now he’d be back with his family. Sorry, Dad, that sorry had a different ending.
I’d talk with my Dad about this story often over the next four decades of my life. When I lived and worked in the Middle East I’d call and tell him how much I thought about Paul Aterides, The Fremen (um, the Bedouin…..), and white saviors (um, humanitarians like me…). We’d talk about how a story, a universe, like this could live inside someone’s mind. Then he’d remind me, between puffs on his GPC cigarettes, that maybe we, too, were all the products of someone’s imagination. I loved those conversations.
Ron Bonds died in the spring of 2018 of lung cancer. I miss him everyday. I’ve been missing him everyday since I was 8 years old so this feeling, this absence, is not new to me. I have tested strategies to feel him with me. Re-reading Dune is one of them.
I turned my sons (ages 13 and 15 as I write this) onto this story early. We listened to it on audiobook on road trips between Austin and Arkansas when we’d be driving to visit my Dad starting when they were 6 and 8. My youngest kid, Bodhi, read Dune in paperback when he was 10 during the COVID quarantine phase of civilization. I am doing my best to continue the family tradition of a single bookshelf in our house: read at your own risk. This same kid read the first Game of Thrones book that year at age 10. It was early COVID times, we were all doing the best we could. My Dad would be so proud of Bodhi’s precocious imagination, the writer that he is becoming, and my own commitment to not managing the fiction that my kids read.
As I sat for the 2nd time in 48 hours seeing Dune 2 over the weekend a few days ago, my sons next to me in a crowded theater, I quietly cried a little. Sharing stories with the people that I love means so much to me. I feel so lucky to have had a Dad who taught me this practice of intimacy, of connection. I miss him a lot.
I’ve been having an imaginary conversation between me + my dead Dad about Dune 2 in my head over the last week. I thought I’d write it down here both for fun and as a tribute to the man who taught me to love stories. I hope you enjoy it.
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Setting: It is March 2023 and I am in my car in Austin, driving my red Toyota Prius, to pick up/drop off a teenager. My Dad is in rural Arkansas where he lived most of his life. This conversation, like most of the time I shared with my Dad after the age of 12, happens over a phone. I’m not an idiot so this conversation on my end is on speakerphone and my Dad is holding a wireless phone from 1998 in his hand while waiting for the Folgers coffee to brew in his dirty, dusty trail house with an 18 oz stained, styrofoam white cup in his aging, brown hands.
RING RING RING RING RING
ME: Hey Dad, how’s it going?
DAD: Hey sweetheart, I’m ok. I was out hauling brush this morning with the backhoe up the mountain. You caught me while I’m back at the trail house filling up my coffee cup. It’s your lucky day!
ME: Um, so, I’m not sure the news reached you out there in the middle of nowhere. The new Dune movie is finally out and Dad, it’s fucking incredible. Like soooooo good.
DAD: Really? That last one was so weird. That skinny dude all slick with kitchen grease in a bikini.
ME: Ya that was weird. I mean, it’s a weird story. So I think any cinematic telling of this story is gonna be weird. It’s still weird but its weirdness is kind of hard to even notice because the movie is SO big! It’s SO loud! Your seat shakes sometimes when the music gets to its biggest.
DAD: Well, movies are big. Books are small. Quiet. I prefer a book. And you can’t smoke in a movie theater so why bother.
ME: Ok ok. And Dad, books aren’t small. Especially this one. It’s a giant. A behemoth. I think it’s so cool that my kids are experiencing this story in this way. It’s so much fun.
DAD: Your kids didn’t read it first? You weren’t like that. You read things.
ME: Dad, you know Bodhi read this book when he was little. Stand down. I only read it at your house and grandma’s house because it was hot AF and there was nothing else to do. Your TV had three channels and the old people just smoked and played dominos all night. I read because I was bored.
DAD: A little boredom never hurt anyone. Kids today could do with some boredom. When was their age…(I interrupt)
ME: Dad, I know. I know. But DUNE!!! Dad, this move; it’s so beautiful.
DAD: How is it beautiful? Arfakis is dry and empty. The Harkonnens are dirty assholes. It’s a story about war. How is any of that beautiful?
ME: The desert IS beautiful. The sound design (he interrupts me)…
DAD: What the hell does that mean?
ME: I mean the music, the score, the way the sound engineers bring the story to life through swords clanging and wind blowing. It’s really like you are there witnessing it all right in front of you, in real life.
DAD: Too much sand. The sand would get into everything, I wouldn’t want to be there. It would be itchy.
ME: You wouldn’t want to ride a sandworm????
DAD: Of course I’d ride a sandworm, that would be something. So you took the boys. to see it? Are people on their phones in a movie theater? I bet they are. People can’t be off their phones these days (I interrupt)….
ME: The theater that we go doesn’t allow that kind of bullshit, Dad (THANK YOU Alamo Drafthouse!!!!). So, no, people are not on their phones. Dad, they changed the emphasis in this version of the story and the witches are the center of it all.
DAD: Well, that’s interesting. Are they mean? The witches?
ME: Ya, kinda, I guess. Mean like they don’t give a shit, they have their long ass plan to execute. The only note I have for this entire film is in casting. They put white actors and actresses in roles where they could’ve been braver and put other colors of people.
DAD: Is that an ok thing to say now, other colors of people? That sounds like colored people. and we aren’t supposed to say that anymore, right? I don’t understand any of that. People are people.
ME: Ok, Dad, you know that isn’t the way the world works, letting people just be people regardless of what color they are, and ya, I think it’s ok to say that. If not, I am sure someone will let me know.
DAD: So, do the Fremen look Arab? Like they should?
ME: Kind of? I am not sure about who all of the extras are who played the Fremen. The costume department made the cast look Arab but there weren’t any Arab actors playing these roles.
DAD: Well that’s lazy.
ME: Sure as shit is.
DAD: When are you coming to visit?
ME: Dad, I can’t visit you. You are dead.
DAD: Sure you can, bring me a beer to the cemetery. I miss the boys. Come sit with me a spell.
ME: Ok, Dad. I’ll be there as soon as. we can get away.
DAD: I love you, kiddo.
ME: I love you too, Dad. See you soon.