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Adolph Knipe
John Bohlen is Adolph Knipe’s boss in “The Great Automatic Grammatizator.” He views Knipe as little more than a useful employee, mentally critiquing his unkempt appearance and perpetually dour attitude. When Knipe pitches the idea for the Great Automatic Grammatizator, Bohlen is skeptical of its profitability, but Knipe quickly persuades him to invest. The two go into business together, using the machine to mass-produce stories under both their own names and pseudonyms until they dominate the publishing industry. Over time, Bohlen grows dissatisfied with the machine’s formulaic, lighthearted output and demands Knipe allow him to create a more substantial story. He suspects that Knipe has kept the “best” stories for himself. But the dynamic between Bohlen and Knipe shifts as the tale unfolds—what began as a traditional boss-employee relationship is upended as Knipe strategically leverages Bohlen’s resources to gain power, ultimately overshadowing the man who once held authority over him.
John Bohlen Quotes in The Great Automatic Grammatizator
The The Great Automatic Grammatizator quotes below are all either spoken by John Bohlen or refer to John Bohlen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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1. The Great Automatic Grammatizator Quotes
‘The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories—well—they’re just another product, like carpets and chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as you deliver the goods.’
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‘For example, there’s a trick that nearly every writer uses, of inserting at least one long, obscure word into each story. This makes the reader think that the man is very wise and clever. [...] There’ll be a whole stack of long words stored away just for this purpose.’
‘Where?’
‘In the “word-memory” section,’ he said, epexegetically.
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John Bohlen Character Timeline in The Great Automatic Grammatizator
The timeline below shows where the character John Bohlen appears in The Great Automatic Grammatizator. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
1. The Great Automatic Grammatizator
In his office, Mr. John Bohlen thanks Adolph Knipe for his significant contributions to their electrical engineering firm’s latest project, an...
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Knipe presents his notes to Mr. Bohlen and proposes building a machine, the Great Automatic Grammatizator, that can generate well-written and creative...
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...out that the machine’s stories will need authors. Seeking prestige, Knipe suggests that he and Bohlen can put their own names on some of the work and become published writers. To...
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As their names become increasingly recognized in the literary world, Knipe and Bohlen expand their operation, refining the Grammatizator to produce full-length novels. Bohlen, eager to create something...
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...foot pedals to control the level and intensity of “passion” throughout each story. After walking Bohlen through the new controls, he lets him “write” his first novel. Bohlen’s initial attempt produces...
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...Knipe devises a plan to eliminate competition by buying out the 50 best-selling English-language authors—though Bohlen doesn’t think writers will take kindly to Knipe’s intentions. Meeting with each writer personally, he...
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