I wish I could write bad novels. If I could write a few dozen bad ones, I might eventually morph one of them into something good.

Alas, smart has nothing to do with it. It is just something in their brain that makes them different. Maybe it’s tenacity or something entirely different. Whatever it is, I ain’t got it. Thankfully age makes it easier to let go.

And yes, essays like the linked item are fun to read but if Herbert were alive he might die laughing at some of this writer’s opinions.

I love reading that kind of stuff, although I take literary criticism with a huge grain of salt…its always an equal-parts mixture of the obvious and the unprovable. Still, it is always valuable to follow along with a good mind as it processes the same data. Even if you don’t agree with a word of it, they invariably have insights into the material that one can profit from.

The problem with litcrit is that you never really know what an author had in mind; very often the author himself doesn’t! A novel may be a carefully devised intellectual and logical exercise, but there is always deep subconscious processing that goes into it. I’ve even caught myself doing things in my writing, upon rereading it years later, that I was not aware I was doing at the time I wrote it. Sometimes, I must confess, I review something I wasn’t particularly happy with when I wrote it and tell myself, ‘Damn, that’s really good!’

I know exactly what you mean about “profound writer’s block for fiction”. It pisses me off, too.

I guess its the difference between art and craft. It’s a bitter lesson I learned about myself (in another context) when I finally gave up on my childhood dream of doing creative work in physics and mathematics. I could bust my butt and work the problems, even get the right answers, but I never was able to do really creative work in the field. Some of us will never play Carnegie Hall, no matter how hard we practice, practice, practice. It will always be piano bar for me.

In the business world, I was well known to write lengthy, narrative, reports that were generally considered excellent work.

I have edited fiction, and while my editing has never been critiqued, I am completely confident that I improved the product.

I have profound writers block for fiction. Pisses me off.

One of the biggies is the elect boy, (usually orphaned, or of dubious parentage), coming to manhood and claiming his destiny. He usually has an older mentor, a main sidekick, a handful of loyal companions, (each of which brings a particular skill to help him in his quest), a magical weapon, an arch villain, a fair maiden, and so on.

I’m sure you can already come up with variations of each of these. For example:

Luke-Arthur-Frodo-Potter-Paul
Vader-Mordred-Sauron-Valdemort-Harkonnen
ObiWan-Merlin-Bilbo-Dumbledore-Leto
Solo-Launcelot-Gandalf-Ron-Duncan
Leia-Guinevere-Galadriel-Hermione-Chani

There are differences, of course, but the patterns are clear: Lightsaber/Excalibur/Sting;
usually a long journey is involved and a great battle at the end settles the issue. Robin and his Merry Men, Jason and the Argonauts, Perseus and Andromeda, its the same old shoot-em-up, same-old-rodeo. And of course, look at the Superman myth, Jor-el, Kal-el, Lex Luthor, Ma and Pa Kent, and the usual suspects: Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane.

Even incest makes an occasional appearance, in some form. Luke has the hots for his sister, and their father is the villain, Morgan Le Fay seduces her brother Arthur, and their son Mordred does double duty as the heavy.

Joseph Campbell writes extensively about this, he made a cushy scholarly career of exploring myth in folk tale and literature through history, and it has been mined by literature and Hollywood ever since.

From another source, related to a the influence of Herbert on Star Wars.

Herbert borrowed several other riffs from Sophocles, including the blind prophet, the hero becoming blind at the death of his wife, and the flawed person being sent out into the wasteland to die (rather than burdening his family and tribe). Herbert also flirted with the subtheme of incest: if love can only exist between equals, there aren’t enough superhumans on Arrakis to go around, so Atreides siblings tend to fall in love: Leto II and Ghani follow the Path of Light, refusing to act on their almost romantic love for each other. Alia is in love with Paul, so she arranges for him to chance upon her when she has no clothes on. This attempt to seduce Paul into an incestuous relationship is evidence that Alia has fallen to the Dark Path.

The linked site is an interesting read on the similarity of Star Wars and Dune and the influence of Shakespeare and Sophocles et al on Herbert. It also speculates on who the characters represent in the writer’s (the essay not Herbert) opinion, I suppose. Harkonnan, the Turks, The Imperium, England and the Germans, more if you care to read it.

I have no idea where Lynch came up with that. I’m not going to read the book again just to find out for sure, but here’s Wikipedia’s bio entry on Alia Atreides

In the novels Alia, aka Saint Alia of the Knife (10,191 AG – 10,220 AG), was born in planet Arrakis. She was the posthumous daughter of Duke Leto Atreides and his Bene Gesserit concubine, Lady Jessica. She is the younger sister to Paul Atreides and, through their mother, a granddaughter to the wicked Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. During the events of Dune, Alia is born on the planet Arrakis in the year 10,191 A.G., eight months after her father’s death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alia_Atreides

Here is Ghanima’s Wiki bio

She is the daughter of Paul Atreides and his Fremen concubine Chani, and the twin sister to Leto Atreides II. Like her aunt Alia and her brother Leto, Ghanima is pre-born; Chani had consumed so much melange during her pregnancy that Leto and Ghanima had awakened to full, adult consciousness before birth, receiving the genetic memories of both their male and female ancestors.

Its been a long time since I’ve read the books, but I don’t remember incest being mentioned anywhere, except perhaps obliquely as a tactic used by the Bene Gesserit in their clandestine breeding programs. For example, if the Bene Gesserit’s original plan had succeeded, Paul would never have been born, and Alia would have married Harkonnen’s nephew (her cousin) and their male offspring would become the Kwisatz Haderach.

It may not be true, but I thought Paul somehow impregnated his mother after escaping the city and before they joined the Fremen.

Dune also deals with one theme often reoccurring in his work: incest. As Paul and his mother enter the “Forbidden Zone” (sic), they undress and soon afterwards Paul will find out that his mother is pregnant

This is from a David Lynch site and it may all be a big mistake and misinterpretation of Herbert’s book. Mistaken or not it shows that others have had this impression.

Jessica was Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, but neither off them knew, and the Bene Gesserit had planned to marry her daughter off to his nephew, Feyd, as part of their breeding program, but Paul being born first upset that plan.

I’m not sure there was any incest in the books, although like I said, it’s been long time since I read the whole series.