himself and not deal it, as he often did at slow times. He behaved predictably.
He sat there with his copy pencil marking the storyâ¦marking itâ¦and saying, âMy God! For God sakes!â He glanced at the clock and shouted to the wire editor (who was in on the gag), âWeâd better try for a page one remake!â
McNeil was editing fast to get down to the bottom, and then he read that line. The flush started at the back of his neck and went right up over his head. He rose to his feet, balled up the paper and heaved it across the room with an angry grunt.
âIf I ever find the son-of-a-bitch who did that,â he shouted, âIâll kill him!â
In 1943, Dad hadnât been doing much fiction writing of any type, and it had been this way since 1938 when hubris had led him to believe incorrectly that he had developed a formula for writing Westerns. The war and his unsuccessful marriage further distracted him. But with the stability of the Oregon Journal job, he began writing again, before and after work. His efforts were rewarded, as he sold a clever two thousand word suspense yarn to Esquire , âSurvival of the Cunning,â published in the March 1945 issue. They paid him two hundred dollarsâa substantial sum for a short story in those days.
Set during World War II, it described a fictional U.S. Army sergeant sent to the Alaskan arctic wilderness to locate a Japanese radio and weather station. A bad situation developed, in which the sergeant and his Eskimo guide were captured by a Japanese soldier, who had an automatic pistol. The Japanese, however, had committed the error of letting his gun warm up in the moist atmosphere of a cabin before taking it outside. Wisely, the Eskimo knew the gun would freeze up in the subzero arctic air outside, and he was able to overcome the captor.
My father had a lifelong fascination with remote regions of the Earth, from frozen locales to tropics to deserts. Desolate beauty appealed to himâ¦the serenity of the wilderness. He had not journeyed to the arctic before writing the Esquire story, but wrote nonetheless in a convincing fashion from research, from stories that had come through newspaper offices, and from his imagination. He developed a knack for traveling in his mind, for transporting himself far away from the room in which he sat at a manual typewriter.
In August 1945, he left the Oregon Journal and took a position on the night rewrite desk of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer . This was a Hearst paper, one of a nationwide chain that maintained a steady drumbeat against Japanese Americans during the war. In large part the Hearst news organs were responsible for sentiment against American citizens of Japanese descent and their mistreatment. But now the war was ending, and more rational moods were setting in.
Frank Herbertâs boyhood buddy, Dan Lodholm, was in the U.S. Coast Guard during the war. When Dan returned to the Northwest after his stint in the service, my father gave him and a number of Coast Guard war heroes a first-class tour of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper plant in downtown Seattle. They were suitably impressed.
Using G-I Bill financial assistance, Frank enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle for the fall quarter of 1945. Without much regard to a major, he intended to take writing classes while still holding down his newspaper job. Soon he would fall head-over-heels for a brunette Scottish-American girl in the same creative writing class.
Chapter 4
âBut Heâs So Blond!â
W HEN F RANK Herbert worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1945 and 1946, he rented a room in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Hooper, near the Montlake Cut in Seattle. While Frank was at work one evening, the Hoopers held a piano recital at which Mr. Hooper played the piano and a well-known Russian-born artist, Jacob Elshin, sang baritone.
One of the guests was a red-haired teenager named Howard (Howie)
He sat there with his copy pencil marking the storyâ¦marking itâ¦and saying, âMy God! For God sakes!â He glanced at the clock and shouted to the wire editor (who was in on the gag), âWeâd better try for a page one remake!â
McNeil was editing fast to get down to the bottom, and then he read that line. The flush started at the back of his neck and went right up over his head. He rose to his feet, balled up the paper and heaved it across the room with an angry grunt.
âIf I ever find the son-of-a-bitch who did that,â he shouted, âIâll kill him!â
In 1943, Dad hadnât been doing much fiction writing of any type, and it had been this way since 1938 when hubris had led him to believe incorrectly that he had developed a formula for writing Westerns. The war and his unsuccessful marriage further distracted him. But with the stability of the Oregon Journal job, he began writing again, before and after work. His efforts were rewarded, as he sold a clever two thousand word suspense yarn to Esquire , âSurvival of the Cunning,â published in the March 1945 issue. They paid him two hundred dollarsâa substantial sum for a short story in those days.
Set during World War II, it described a fictional U.S. Army sergeant sent to the Alaskan arctic wilderness to locate a Japanese radio and weather station. A bad situation developed, in which the sergeant and his Eskimo guide were captured by a Japanese soldier, who had an automatic pistol. The Japanese, however, had committed the error of letting his gun warm up in the moist atmosphere of a cabin before taking it outside. Wisely, the Eskimo knew the gun would freeze up in the subzero arctic air outside, and he was able to overcome the captor.
My father had a lifelong fascination with remote regions of the Earth, from frozen locales to tropics to deserts. Desolate beauty appealed to himâ¦the serenity of the wilderness. He had not journeyed to the arctic before writing the Esquire story, but wrote nonetheless in a convincing fashion from research, from stories that had come through newspaper offices, and from his imagination. He developed a knack for traveling in his mind, for transporting himself far away from the room in which he sat at a manual typewriter.
In August 1945, he left the Oregon Journal and took a position on the night rewrite desk of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer . This was a Hearst paper, one of a nationwide chain that maintained a steady drumbeat against Japanese Americans during the war. In large part the Hearst news organs were responsible for sentiment against American citizens of Japanese descent and their mistreatment. But now the war was ending, and more rational moods were setting in.
Frank Herbertâs boyhood buddy, Dan Lodholm, was in the U.S. Coast Guard during the war. When Dan returned to the Northwest after his stint in the service, my father gave him and a number of Coast Guard war heroes a first-class tour of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper plant in downtown Seattle. They were suitably impressed.
Using G-I Bill financial assistance, Frank enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle for the fall quarter of 1945. Without much regard to a major, he intended to take writing classes while still holding down his newspaper job. Soon he would fall head-over-heels for a brunette Scottish-American girl in the same creative writing class.
Chapter 4
âBut Heâs So Blond!â
W HEN F RANK Herbert worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1945 and 1946, he rented a room in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Hooper, near the Montlake Cut in Seattle. While Frank was at work one evening, the Hoopers held a piano recital at which Mr. Hooper played the piano and a well-known Russian-born artist, Jacob Elshin, sang baritone.
One of the guests was a red-haired teenager named Howard (Howie)
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