I recently reread some of my favorite Roald Dahl stories. One in particular, “The Great Automatic Grammatizator” is about a computer that effectively learns the writing styles of various authors, and is able to churn out stories in these various styles better and faster than the real authors. In the story, some authors try to fight their cybernetic replacement. But eventually all of the authors cave in to the inevitable, signing contracts which specify that in the future they will no longer write, but will simply license their work from the computer.<\/p>\n
The most fiendishly clever passage occurs when the Grammatizator’s inventor is explaining its workings to one hapless but fascinated writer:<\/p>\n
\n“There\u2019s a trick nearly every writer uses, of inserting one long, obscure word into every story. This makes the reader think the man is very wise and clever. So I have the machine do the same thing. There\u2019ll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose.”<\/p>\n
“Where?”<\/p>\n
“In the word-memory section,” he said epexegetically.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What I find lovely about this passage is the effect of the insertion of that one word “epexegetically” (which means “by way of additional explanation”). Its appearance changes the entire meaning of the story. Suddenly it is being suggested that you are not merely reading a story by Raoul Dahl, but rather one that has been written by the machine which is being described – a machine which has replaced Roald Dahl himself.<\/p>\n
Of course we know this cannot be true. After all, the machine is merely a fiction that exists inside the story. And yet, as an intellectual concept, the impossible inversion is successfully planted in our minds. I find this concept completely delicious – like the joy I felt the first time I ever saw one of M.C. Escher’s impossible waterfalls.<\/p>\n
Can anyone think of other examples in which an author calls into question the very existence of the author?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently reread some of my favorite Roald Dahl stories. One in particular, “The Great Automatic Grammatizator” is about a computer that effectively learns the writing styles of various authors, and is able to churn out stories in these various styles better and faster than the real authors. In the story, some authors try to … Continue reading “Epexegetically”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}