The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert

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Another lesson I learned in childhood is that what people do is just as important as—and maybe more so than—what they say. I had a marvelous object lesson in the difference between words and actions when I was in fourth grade. In those days I was bored to death by school, so I tended to cause a lot of trouble.

One day our teacher, a great big woman who wore eye-glasses that looked like the bottoms of pop bottles, caught me in the middle of a particularly heinous prank. She told me to stay after school and added, "I just don't know what I'm going to do with you."

Of course, I could imagine all kinds of horrible things she might do to me . . . like the bastinado, or worse! But when school was over, she just made me sit and sit while she worked on papers. After what seemed like ages, she motioned me up to her desk, stared at me awhile—I could feel two holes being burned right through me—and then resumed her paperwork.

PLOWBOY: You must have been terrified.

HERBERT: Oh, I was. Finally, she put her pencil down and said, "I just don't know what I'm going to do with you." Well, it was all too much for me. I started to cry. She put her face right in front of mine then and said again!—"I just don't know what I'm going to do with you." And I said through my sobs, "Why are you mad at me?"

With that, she grabbed me by the shoulders, began shaking me roughly, and cried, "I'm not mad at you, I'm not mad at you!" Well, I now know that teachers get long lectures during their training on the importance of keeping their tempers with their students, so I had said exactly the wrong thing to this woman. I may not have understood that at the time, but I didn't have a bit of trouble realizing that my teacher—who was repeatedly screaming, "I'm not mad at you!"—was nearly out of her mind with rage.

That incident drove home the lesson that what people say often doesn't agree with what they actually do. And that discovery played a big part in the shaping my thinking and behavior.

PLOWBOY: Do you try, in your own life, to keep a consistent thread between words and actions, then?

HERBERT: Absolutely. I already told you that family bonds are very important to me, and that we left the country to be able to teach our own children. There were also years—when our youngsters were quite small-that Bev, my wife, was the family's major income earner. She went out to the office and brought in a paycheck, while I stayed home . . . did the cooking, laundry, and housekeeping . . . took care of the children . . . and worked on my writing.

Our children are grown up now, but I still participate in family rituals. In fact, my niece called me last night, and I've got to change a previous appointment and go down to Eugene, Oregon . . . because she's graduating from the university there.

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