{"id":14707,"date":"2026-11-10T12:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T17:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=14707"},"modified":"2026-11-10T12:13:55","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T17:13:55","slug":"message-in-a-bottle-but-to-someone-else-and-whom-it-may-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/14707","title":{"rendered":"Message In A Bottle&#8230;But To Someone Else And Whom It May Concern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I sent this today to a user on Facebook whose posts I follow for his insightful thinking, but as we are not friended on Facebook its Message function will probably bury it unless he goes looking for it, and he probably gets lots of message requests from other users who he hasn&#8217;t friended. So he may not even see this one.<\/p>\n<p>But it occurs to me that I should put this here for other&#8230;innocents&#8230;who were traumatized by this Frank Herbert book, or who haven&#8217;t yet read it&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I saw your current post about that very strange children\u2019s book and had to circle back around to your post, where you say there are two Frank Herberts. Personally I think there is only one and it\u2019s like looking into Nietzsche\u2019s abyss\u2026but your mileage may vary. Since I read that post I\u2019ve been thinking about asking you if you\u2019ve ever read Soul Catcher and what your thoughts were on it. I think its where you really see the man.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t I\u2019ll spoil it for you right now so you won\u2019t be traumatized by it like I was: The 13 year old kid is killed by his kidnapper, who he\u2019d come in that Stockholm syndrome way to like and trust him a fatal second time. And if you think that kid\u2019s sacrificial killing is bad enough, how Herbert constructs it, leads the reader to it, is worse, ugly worse.<\/p>\n<p>It is the only Herbert book I\u2019ve ever read and I think I might have felt less dirty afterward reading The Turner Diaries. There is a core at the center of that man, who it is said made his sons take lie detector tests when they misbehaved, that is darker than anything I ever wanted to see, and I have seen some darkness in my 73 years.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t have the time, or would rather not, I respect that. You\u2019ve said you go down rabbit holes. This is the abyss. I was just curious.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014<br \/>\nBruce Garrett<br \/>\nBaltimore, Maryland<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just curious about the rest of you too. In the way that I&#8217;m curious how other folk cope with evil that laughs in your face&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I sent this today to a user on Facebook whose posts I follow for his insightful thinking, but as we are not friended on Facebook its Message function will probably bury it unless he goes looking for it, and he probably gets lots of message requests from other users who he hasn&#8217;t friended. So he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[90],"class_list":["post-14707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-the-human-gutter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14707"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14711,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14707\/revisions\/14711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}