Someone Like You

The money started pouring in. Knipe slowly and carefully stepped up the output, and in six months’ time he was delivering thirty stories a week, and selling about half.

He began to make a name for himself in literary circles as a prolific and successful writer. So did Mr Bohlen; but not quite such a good name, although he didn’t know it. At the same time, Knipe was building up a dozen or more fictitious persons as promising young authors. Everything was going fine.

At this point it was decided to adapt the machine for writing novels as well as stories. Mr Bohlen, thirsting now for greater honours in the literary world, insisted that Knipe go to work at once on this prodigious task.

‘I want to do a novel,’ he kept saying. ‘I want to do a novel.’

‘And so you will, sir. And so you will. But please be patient. This is a very complicated adjustment I have to make.’

‘Everyone tells me I ought to do a novel,’ Mr Bohlen cried. ‘All sorts of publishers are chasing after me day and night begging me to stop fooling around with stories and do something really important instead. A novel’s the only thing that counts – that’s what they say.’

‘We’re going to do novels,’ Knipe told him. ‘Just as many as we want. But please be patient.’

‘Now listen to me, Knipe. What I’m going to do is a serious novel, something that’ll make ’em sit up and take notice. I’ve been getting rather tired of the sort of stories you’ve been putting my name to lately. As a matter of fact, I’m none too sure you haven’t been trying to make a monkey out of me.’

‘A monkey, Mr Bohlen?’

‘Keeping all the best ones for yourself, that’s what you’ve been doing.’

‘Oh no, Mr Bohlen! No!’

‘So this time I’m going to make damn sure I write a high class intelligent book. You understand that.’

‘Look, Mr Bohlen. With the sort of switchboard I’m rigging up, you’ll be able to write any sort of book you want.’

And this was true, for within another couple of months, the genius of Adolph Knipe had not only adapted the machine for novel writing, but had constructed a marvellous new control system which enabled the author to pre-select literally any type of plot and any style of writing he desired. There were so many dials and levers on the thing, it looked like the instrument panel of some enormous aeroplane.

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?’