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Intro
Roald Dahl’s The Great Automatic Grammatizator is a collection of 13 short stories that explore the darker, more corrupt sides of human nature and often end with unexpected twists. In the eponymous story, Adolph Knipe, an uninspired engineer, finishes designing an advanced calculator for his firm and has a revelation—if machines can solve math problems, why couldn’t they write stories too? He pitches the idea to his boss, Mr. Bohlen, claiming they could make a fortune. Together, they build the Great Automatic Grammatizator, a device that rapidly mass-produces fiction. As the business grows, Knipe refines the machine to generate novels. Soon, he begins buying out real authors, paying them to never publish again. Some refuse, but most accept. The weary narrator, a writer, tries to resist this fate, staring at an unsigned contract as the narrator’s children cry out in hunger.
In “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” Mrs. Bixby has been conducting an affair with the Colonel for eight years. When he suddenly breaks up with her, he gifts her a beautiful mink coat. Aware that she can’t explain the expensive item to Mr. Bixby, she hatches a plan. She pawns the coat, takes the receipt home, and pretends she found it in a taxi. When she shows it to her husband, he insists on picking up the unclaimed item himself. But when Mr. Bixby finally presents her with the “pawned” item, it isn’t the coat she expected—it’s a small mink stole. As he chatters about its supposed worth, she quietly seethes, assuming the pawnbroker cheated her. But leaving her husband’s dental office, she finds his secretary, Miss Pulteney, sitting at her desk—draped in the Colonel’s coat.
In “The Butler,” Mr. Cleaver hires a butler, Tibbs, and a French chef, Monsieur Estragon, to elevate his London dinner parties. Tibbs convinces Mr. Cleaver to replace his cheap Spanish red wine with expensive vintages, but his guests remain consistently unimpressed. When Tibbs suggests the excessive vinegar in the salad dressing might be to blame, Mr. Cleaver dismisses the idea. One night, as Cleaver boasts about his Château Lafite ’45, Tibbs reveals the truth—the guests have been drinking the same cheap wine all along; Tibbs and Estragon have been secretly enjoying the expensive wines themselves. Declaring that good wine deserves real appreciation, Tibbs quits on the spot and leaves with Estragon.
In “Man from the South,” the vacationing narrator relaxes by the hotel pool. An older, wealthy-looking man, Carlos, joins him, and they chat until a young American sailor offers to light their cigarettes. Carlos coyly remarks that he doubts the sailor’s lighter will work 10 times in a row. The sailor insists it never fails, and Carlos proposes a wild bet: if the sailor succeeds, he wins Carlos’s Cadillac; if he fails, he loses his pinky finger. In Carlos’s room, the game begins, each successful flame raising the tension—until Carlos’s wife bursts in, stopping him. She reveals he has severed 47 fingers and lost 11 cars. The Cadillac, she says, is actually hers, and three of her own fingers are missing.
In “The Landlady,” 17-year-old Billy Weaver arrives in Bath searching for temporary lodgings. He winds up at a charming bed-and-breakfast and is immediately greeted by its landlady. Warm, generous, and slightly scatterbrained, she explains that Billy is her only guest and makes him a cup of tea. Though Billy recognizes the two other names in the guestbook, Christopher Mulholland and Gregory Temple, he can’t place them. As they drink their tea, the landlady fondly recalls both boys, then admits they’re still guests on the third floor. She also reveals her taxidermy hobby, implying that she killed her past guests—presumably by poisoning them with tea—and stuffed them.
In “Parson’s Pleasure,” antique dealer Cyril Boggis, disguised as a clergyman, visits rural homes to trick owners into selling their valuable furniture. At Rummins’s farmhouse, Boggis finds an extremely rare commode but convinces the skeptical owners it’s only an imitation. He buys it for £20, planning to resell it for thousands. Worried it won’t fit in his car, the men saw off the legs without Boggis’s knowledge, destroying the piece and leaving him with nothing.
In “The Umbrella Man,” the 12-year-old narrator and her mother, stranded in the rain, are approached by an elderly man with an umbrella, offering it in exchange for £1 for his taxi home. Though wary, the mother agrees. As they watch him walk away without hailing a cab, they grow suspicious. They follow him to a pub, where he spends the money on whiskey, then steals another umbrella from the coat rack. He repeats the scam on a new passerby, and the narrator thinks he could do this indefinitely—so long as it keeps raining.
In “Katina,” RAF pilots stationed in Greece during WWII rescue Katina, the young survivor of a German attack that killed her family. The men adopt her into their ranks, and she becomes an honorary squadron member. As German air raids intensify, the squadron suffers many losses, and the RAF narrator senses their inevitable defeat. Later, as the RAF retreats during battle, Katina runs onto the airfield, shaking her fists at the sky, and is shot. The men rush to her side, but she is already dead. Watching his burning aircraft, the narrator sees Katina standing amid the flames, radiant and brave.
In “The Way up to Heaven,” Mrs. Foster, plagued by an extreme fear of being late, is tormented by Mr. Foster’s deliberate delays. Running late for a long-awaited flight to Paris to visit her grandchildren, she rushes inside to fetch her husband but stops short, hearing a strange noise. Instead of investigating, she quickly leaves and makes her flight. After six peaceful weeks abroad, she returns to find Mr. Foster missing, the house undisturbed, and the elevator stuck between floors. She calmly calls for a repairman, her actions hinting that Mr. Foster is dead—he’s been stuck inside the elevator since she left.
In “Royal Jelly,” Mabel and Albert Taylor’s newborn baby daughter has stopped eating and is rapidly losing weight. A beekeeper dedicated to his trade, Albert becomes obsessed with the healing potential of bees’ royal jelly. He secretly begins mixing it into the baby’s feedings, and within hours, she drastically improves. Mabel is relieved at first, until she realizes that the baby’s body is bloating strangely, her skin covered in fine fur. Albert—who exhibits the same physical changes as his daughter—calmly admits he’s been consuming royal jelly for months. Beaming, he calls the baby their “little queen.”
In “Vengeance is Mine Inc.,” broke roommates Claude and George hatch a lucrative scheme to sell revenge. Their business offers escalating physical punishments for a hefty fee, and they begin by soliciting the wealthy victims of notorious gossip columnist Lionel Pantaloon. Securing their first clients, they cleverly charge multiple victims for the same attack. George, disguised with a mustache and fake accent, delivers their first hit—a public punch to Pantaloon’s nose. A satisfied client overpays them, urging them to flee. Driving south, Claude and George dream of achieving more wealth and, perhaps one day, fame.
In “Taste,” a usually tame bet goes awry when the stakes are dramatically raised. Richard Pratt, a smug wine expert, accepts Mike Schofield’s typical dinner party challenge: identify the night’s wine, down to its precise vineyard and year. But this time, if Pratt wins, he wants to marry Mike’s daughter, Louise. Certain Pratt will fail, Mike convinces Louise to agree. Ultimately, Pratt correctly names the wine. Just as Mike is forced to admit defeat, the maid innocently hands Pratt his glasses—which he left in Mike’s study, where the wine had been left out to breathe before dinner—exposing him as a cheater.
In “Neck,” the unnamed narrator meets Lady Turton, the powerful and beautiful wife of Basil Turton, who recently inherited his father’s newspaper empire, The Turton Press. Lady Turton invites the narrator to visit their estate, where he witnesses her dominance over Basil and her open flirtation with handsome socialite Major Jack Haddock. The next morning, Lady Turton playfully sticks her head through a wooden sculpture and becomes stuck. Jelks, the butler, offers Basil an axe and a saw to free her, subtly encouraging him to take the axe. As a strange trance comes over Basil and he raises the axe, the narrator shuts his eyes. When he opens them, he sees Lady Turton’s face gray and gurgling, but her fate is left unclear.
