Golux

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The Golux is a fictional character in James Thurber's children's book The 13 Clocks. He is a plot device, the archetypical mysterious and wise little old man, given to meaningless, but eminently quotable, utterances, the most important of which is his self-description: "I am the Golux, the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device." Toward the end of the book the villain, in a fit of rage, accuses him of being a "Golux Ex Machina" -- but in fact both the Golux's wisdom and his abilities are somewhat in question throughout, and turn out to be only barely sufficient to get the hero of the story to the required happy ending.

The Golux wears an "indescribable hat," and at a point in the story when he appears to have failed, the hat suddenly seems describable. Thurber, who was by that time blind and could no longer draw cartoons to illustrate the book as he did with The White Deer five years earlier, had the book illustrated by his friend Marc Simont. Before publication, Thurber required Simont to describe all the illustrations, and was satisfied when Simont was unable to describe the hat.

The word "Golux" comes from "Green Code", one of the five codes used by the U.S. State Department at the end of World War I, when Thurber served as a code clerk. The word "golux" meant "period".