Someone Like You

by Roald Dahl

  First, by depressing one of a series of master buttons, the writer made his primary decision: historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic, humorous, or straight. Then, from the second row (the basic buttons), he chose his theme: army life, pioneer days, civil war, world war, racial problem, wild west, country life, childhood memories, seafaring, the sea bottom and many, many more. The third row of buttons gave a choice of literary style, classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine, etc. The fourth row was for characters, the fifth for wordage – and so on and so on – ten long rows of pre-selector buttons.

  But that wasn’t all. Control had also to be exercised during the actual writing process (which took about fifteen minutes per novel), and to do this the author had to sit, as it were, in the driver’s seat, and pull (or push) a battery of labelled stops, as on an organ. By so doing, he was able continually to modulate or merge fifty different and variable qualities such as tension, surprise, humour, pathos, and mystery. Numerous dials and gauges on the dashboard itself told him throughout exactly how far along he was with his work.

  Finally, there was the question of ‘passion’. From a careful study of the books at the top of the best-seller lists for the past year, Adolph Knipe had decided that this was the most important ingredient of all – a magical catalyst that somehow or other could transform the dullest novel into a howling success – at any rate financially. But Knipe also knew that passion was powerful, heady stuff, and must be prudently dispensed – the right proportions at the right moments; and to ensure this, he had devised an independent control consisting of two sensitive sliding adjustors operated by foot-pedals, similar to the throttle and brake in a car. One pedal governed the percentage of passion to be injected, the other regulated its intensity. There was no doubt, of course – and this was the only drawback – that the writing of a novel by the Knipe methods was going to be rather like flying a plane and driving a car and playing an organ all at the same time, but this did not trouble the inventor. When all was ready, he proudly escorted Mr Bohlen into the machine house and began to explain the operating procedure for the new wonder.

  ‘Good God, Knipe! I’ll never be able to do all that! Dammit, man, it’d be easier to write the thing by hand!’

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it, Mr Bohlen, I promise you. In a week or two, you’ll be doing it without hardly thinking. It’s just like learning to drive.’

  Well, it wasn’t quite as easy at that, but after many hours of practice, Mr Bohlen began to get the hang of it, and finally, late one evening, he told Knipe to make ready for running off the first novel. It was a tense moment, with the fat little man crouching nervously in the driver’s seat, and the tall toothy Knipe fussing excitedly around him.

  ‘I intend to write an important novel, Knipe.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, sir. I’m sure you will.’

  With one finger, Mr Bohlen carefully pressed the necessary pre-selector buttons:

  Master button – satirical

  Subject – racial problem

  Style – classical

  Characters – six men, four women, one infant

  Length – fifteen chapters.

  At the same time he had his eye particularly upon three organ stops marked power, mystery, profundity.

  ‘Are you ready, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m ready.’

  Knipe pulled the switch. The great engine hummed. There was a deep whirring sound from the oiled movement of fifty thousand cogs and rods and levers; then came the drumming of the rapid electrical typewriter, setting up a shrill, almost intolerable clatter. Out into the basket flew the typewritten pages – one every two seconds. But what with the noise and the excitement, and having to play upon the stops, and watch the chapter-counter and the pace-indicator and the passion-gauge, Mr Bohlen began to panic. He reacted in precisely the way a learner driver does in a car – by pressing both feet hard down on the pedals and keeping them there until the thing stopped.

  ‘Congratulations on your first novel,’ Knipe said, picking up the great bundle of typed pages from the basket.

  Little pearls of sweat were oozing out all over Mr Bohlen’s face. ‘It sure was hard work, my boy.’

  ‘But you got it done, sir. You got it done.’

  ‘Let me see it, Knipe. How does it read?’

  He started to go through the first chapter, passing each finished page to the younger man.

  ‘Good heavens, Knipe! What’s this!’ Mr Bohlen’s thin purple fish-lip was moving slightly as it mouthed the words, his cheeks were beginning slowly to inflate.

  ‘But look here, Knipe! This is outrageous!’

  ‘I must say it’s a bit fruity, sir.’

  ‘Fruity! It’s perfectly revolting! I can’t possibly put my name to this!’

  ‘Quite right, sir. Quite right.’

  ‘Knipe! Is this some nasty trick you’ve been playing on me?’

  ‘Oh no, sir! No!’

  ‘It certainly looks like it.’

  ‘You don’t think, Mr Bohlen, that you mightn’t have been pressing a little hard on the passion-control pedals, do you?’

  ‘My dear boy, how should I know.’

  ‘Why don’t you try another?’

  So Mr Bohlen ran off a second novel, and this time it went according to plan.

  Within a week, the manuscript had been read and accepted by an enthusiastic publisher. Knipe followed with one in his own name, then made a dozen more for good measure. In no time at all, Adolph Knipe’s Literary Agency had become famous for its large stable of promising young novelists. And once again the money started rolling in.

  It was at this stage that young Knipe began to display a real talent for big business.

  ‘See here, Mr Bohlen,’ he said. ‘We still got too much competition. Why don’t we just absorb all the other writers in the country?’

  Mr Bohlen, who now sported a bottle-green velvet jacket and allowed his hair to cover two-thirds of his ears, was quite content with things the way they were. ‘Don’t know what you mean, my boy. You can’t just absorb writers.’

  ‘Of course you can, sir. Exactly like Rockefeller did with his oil companies. Simply buy ’em out, and if they won’t sell, squeeze ’em out. It’s easy!’

  ‘Careful now, Knipe. Be careful.’

  ‘I’ve got a list here, sir, of fifty of the most successful writers in the country, and what I intend to do is offer each one of them a lifetime contract with pay. All they have to do is undertake never to write another word; and, of course, to let us use their names on our own stuff. How about that.’

  ‘They’ll never agree.’

  ‘You don’t know writers, Mr Bohlen. You watch and see.’

  ‘What about the creative urge, Knipe?’

  ‘It’s bunk! All they’re really interested in is the money – just like everybody else.’

  In the end, Mr Bohlen reluctantly agreed to give it a try, and Knipe, with his list of writers in his pocket, went off in a large chauffeur-driven Cadillac to make his calls.

  He journeyed first to the man at the top of the list, a very great and wonderful writer, and he had no trouble getting into the house. He told his story and produced a suitcase full of sample novels, and a contract for the man to sign which guaranteed him so much a year for life. The man listened politely, decided he was dealing with a lunatic, gave him a drink, then firmly showed him to the door.

  The second writer on the list, when he saw Knipe was serious, actually attacked him with a large metal paper-weight, and the inventor had to flee down the garden followed by such a torrent of abuse and obscenity as he had never heard before.

  But it took more than this to discourage Adolph Knipe. He was disappointed but not dismayed, and off he went in his big car to seek his next client. This one was a female, famous and popular, whose fat romantic books sold by the million across the country. She received Knipe graciously, gave him tea, and listened attentively to his story.


  ‘It all sounds very fascinating,’ she said. ‘But of course I find it a little hard to believe.’

  ‘Madam,’ Knipe answered. ‘Come with me and see it with your own eyes. My car awaits you.’

  So off they went, and in due course, the astonished lady was ushered into the machine house where the wonder was kept, Eagerly, Knipe explained its workings, and after a while he even permitted her to sit in the driver’s seat and practise with the buttons.

  ‘All right,’ he said suddenly ‘you want to do a book now?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she cried. ‘Please!’

  She was very competent and seemed to know exactly what she wanted. She made her own pre-selections, then ran off a long, romantic, passion-filled novel. She read through the first chapter and became so enthusiastic that she signed up on the spot.

  ‘That’s one of them out of the way,’ Knipe said to Mr Bohlen afterwards. ‘A pretty big one too.’

  ‘Nice work, my boy.’

  ‘And you know why she signed?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t the money. She’s got plenty of that.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Knipe grinned, lifting his lip and baring a long pale upper gum. ‘Simply because she saw the machine-made stuff was better than her own.’

  Thereafter, Knipe wisely decided to concentrate only upon mediocrity. Anything better than that – and there were so few it didn’t matter much – was apparently not quite so easy to seduce.

  In the end, after several months of work, he had persuaded something like seventy per cent of the writers on his list to sign the contract. He found that the older ones, those who were running out of ideas and had taken to drink, were the easiest to handle. The younger people were more troublesome. They were apt to become abusive, sometimes violent when he approached them; and more than once Knipe was slightly injured on his rounds.

  But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year – the first full year of the machine’s operation – it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.

  Does this surprise you?’

  I doubt it.

  And worse is yet to come. Today, as the secret spreads, many more are hurrying to tie up with Mr Knipe. And all the time the screw turns tighter for those who hesitate to sign their names.

  This very moment, as I sit here listening to the howling of my nine starving children in the other room, I can feel my own hand creeping closer and closer to that golden contract that lies over on the other side of the desk.

  Give us strength, Oh Lord, to let our children starve.

  Claud’s Dog

  The Ratcatcher

  In the afternoon the ratcatcher came to the filling station. He came sidling up the driveway with a stealthy, soft-treading gait, making no noise at all with his feet on the gravel. He had an army knapsack slung over one shoulder and he was wearing an old-fashioned black jacket with large pockets. His brown corduroy trousers were tied around the knees with pieces of white string.

  ‘Yes?’ Claud asked, knowing very well who he was.

  ‘Rodent operative.’ His small dark eyes moved swiftly over the premises.

  ‘The ratcatcher?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  The man was lean and brown with a sharp face and two long sulphur-coloured teeth that protruded from the upper jaw, overlapping the lower lip, pressing it inward. The ears were thin and pointed and set far back on the head, near the nape of the neck. The eyes were almost black, but when they looked at you there was a flash of yellow somewhere inside them.

  ‘You’ve come very quick.’

  ‘Special orders from the Health Officer.’

  ‘And now you’re going to catch all the rats?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The kind of dark furtive eyes he had were those of an animal that lives its life peering out cautiously and forever from a hole in the ground.

  ‘How are you going to catch ’em?’

  ‘Ah-h-h,’ the ratman said darkly. ‘That’s all accordin’ to where they is.’

  ‘Trap ’em, I suppose.’

  ‘Trap ’em!’ he cried, disgusted. ‘You won’t catch many rats that way! Rats isn’t rabbits, you know.’

  He held his face up high, sniffing the air with a nose that twitched perceptibly from side to side.

  ‘No,’ he said, scornfully. ‘Trappin’s no way to catch a rat. Rats is clever, let me tell you that. If you want to catch ’em, you got to know ’em. You got to know rats on this job.’

  I could see Claud staring at him with a certain fascination.

  ‘They’re more clever’n dogs, rats is.’

  ‘Get away.’

  ‘You know what they do? They watch you! All the time you’re goin’ round preparin’ to catch ’em, they’re sittin’ quietly in dark places, watchin’ you.’ The man crouched, stretching his stringy neck far forward.

  ‘So what do you do?’ Claud asked, fascinated.

  ‘Ah! That’s it, you see. That’s where you got to know rats.’

  ‘How d’you catch ’em?’

  ‘There’s ways,’ the ratman said, leering. ‘There’s various ways.’

  He paused, nodding his repulsive head sagely up and down. ‘It’s all dependin’,’ he said, ‘on where they is. This ain’t a sewer job, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not a sewer job.’

  ‘Tricky things, sewer jobs. Yes,’ he said, delicately sniffing the air to the left of him with his mobile nose-end, ‘sewer jobs is very tricky things.’

  ‘Not especially, I shouldn’t think.’

  ‘Oh-ho. You shouldn’t, shouldn’t you! Well, I’d like to see you do a sewer job! Just exactly how would you set about it, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Nothing to it. I’d just poison ’em, that’s all.’

  ‘And where exactly would you put the poison, might I ask?’

  ‘Down the sewer. Where the hell you think I put it!’

  ‘There!’ the ratman cried, triumphant. ‘I knew it! Down the sewer! And you know what’d happen then? Get washed away, that’s all. Sewer’s like a river, y’know.’

  ‘That’s what you say,’ Claud answered. ‘That’s only what you say.’

  ‘It’s facts.’

  ‘All right, then, all right. So what would you do, Mr Know-all?’

  ‘That’s exactly where you got to know rats, on a sewer job.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s have it.’

  ‘Now listen. I’ll tell you.’ The ratman advanced a step closer, his voice became secretive and confidential, the voice of a man divulging fabulous professional secrets. ‘You works on the understandin’ that a rat is a gnawin’ animal, see. Rats gnaws. Anythin’ you give ’em, don’t matter what it is, anythin’ new they never seen before, and what do they do? They gnaws it. So now! There you are! You get a sewer job on your hands. And what d’you do?’

  His voice had the soft throaty sound of a croaking frog and he seemed to speak all his words with an immense wet-lipped relish, as though they tasted good on the tongue. The accent was similar to Claud’s, the broad soft accent of the Buckinghamshire countryside, but his voice was more throaty, the words more fruity in his mouth.

  ‘All you do is you go down the sewer and you take along some ordinary paper bags, just ordinary brown paper bags, and these bags is filled with plaster of Paris powder. Nothin’ else. Then you suspend the bags from the roof of the sewer so they hang down not quite touchin’ the water. See? Not quite touchin’, and just high enough so a rat can reach ’em.’

  Claud was listening, rapt.

  ‘There you are, y’see. Old rat comes swimmin’ along the sewer and sees the bag. He stops. He takes a sniff at it and it don’t smell so bad anyway. So what’s he do then?’

  ‘He gnaws it,’ Claud cried, delighted.

  ‘There! That’s it! That’s exactly it! He starts gnawin’ away at the bag and the b
ag breaks and the old rat gets a mouthful of powder for his pains.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That does him.’

  ‘What? Kills him?’

  ‘Yep. Kills him stony!’

  ‘Plaster of Paris ain’t poisonous, you know.’

  ‘Ah! There you are! That’s exackly where you’re wrong, see. This powder swells. When you wet it, it swells. Gets into the rat’s tubes and swells right up and kills him quicker’n anythin’ in the world.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘That’s where you got to know rats.’

  The ratman’s face glowed with a stealthy pride, and he rubbed his stringy fingers together, holding the hands up close to the face. Claud watched him, fascinated.

  ‘Now – where’s them rats?’ The word ‘rats’ came out of his mouth soft and throaty, with a rich fruity relish as though he were gargling with melted butter. ‘Let’s take a look at them rraats.’

  ‘Over there in the hayrick across the road.’

  ‘Not in the house?’ he asked, obviously disappointed.

  ‘No. Only around the hayrick. Nowhere else.’

  ‘I’ll wager they’re in the house too. Like as not gettin’ in all your food in the night and spreadin’ disease and sickness. You got any disease here?’ he asked, looking first at me, then at Claud.

  ‘Everyone fine here.’

  ‘Quite sure?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You never know, you see. You could be sickenin’ for it weeks and weeks and not feel it. Then all of a sudden – bang! – and it’s got you. That’s why Dr Arbuthnot’s so particular. That’s why he sent me out so quick, see. To stop the spreadin’ of disease.’

  He had now taken upon himself the mantle of the Health Officer. A most important rat he was now, deeply disappointed that we were not suffering from bubonic plague.