conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Flying Dutch about Vanderdecker, Alive, except with the genre: Literature & Fiction, British & Irish.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Alive for more than 450 years, doomed to ply the seas endlessly (except for shore leave), Capt. Cornelius Vanderdecker is the Flying Dutchman immortalized in legend and Wagner's opera. In a sophisticated fantasy that is occasionally hilarious but sometimes as creaky as the Dutchman's wood ship, levelheaded London accountant Jane Doland discovers some anomalies in an old ledger and sets out to find beer-swilling Vanderdecker to prevent him from cashing in on a life insurance policy that would bankrupt all of Europe. Meanwhile the captain, cursed with an unpleasant odor, seeks the Ultimate Deodorant from megalomaniac alchemist/inventor Professor Montalban, who invented the computer in 1694. the author ( The Walled Orchard ) peppers these antics doings with jokes about accountants, history, death, taxes and the general rottenness of existence. His diverting story provides numerous compelling reasons why one would not want to live for centuries. <BR>Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Flying Dutch
  Vanderdecker knew exactly where the Medway was, and frowned. He disliked being referred to as a legend, even in his own lifetime. But the plump young man hadn't finished yet.
  This had the effect on the plump young man that sugar has on a full tank of petrol. He stopped talking and made a request that Vanderdecker, for his part, would have found it difficult to grant.
  By an odd coincidence, although not even Vanderdecker was aware of it, the plump young man was Vanderdecker's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson; the final product of an evolutionary process which had started with a fleeting encounter with a barmaid in New England in 1674. And there was proof, if proof were needed, that the version of the story that Junior had just gone through was nothing but a pack of lies, for Vanderdecker had been off and away without waiting to see if the barmaid in question would be faithful until a mild cold, let alone death. He was younger then, of course - a stripling of one hundred and sixteen - and still obsessed with wild notions of having a good time every once in a while. Nowadays, on the rare occasions when he met them, he looked upon barmaids simply as people who were paid to sell him alcoholic beverages.
  The girl looked at her watch for the third time in four minutes and said that they had better be getting along or they would be late for the curtain. Her companion said there was no hurry, he hadn't finished telling her the plot. She replied that she would just have to muddle through, somehow or other. Vanderdecker got the impression that she wasn't enjoying herself very much.
  They got up and left, leaving the man staring at his glass and wondering why, when so many things had remained basically the same through the centuries, the human race had chosen to muck about with beer quite so much. In his young days they slung some malt in a bucket, added boiling water, and then went away and forgot about it for a week or so. The result of this laissez-faire attitude was incomparably preferable to the modern version, he seemed to remember - or was that just another aspect of getting old? Not that he was getting old, of course; no such luck. He looked and felt exactly the way he did in 1585 - which was more, he reflected, than you could say for Dover Castle.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' It was an extraordinary thought, but it was there.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Vanderdecker was just about to object when two tiny leads connected in his memory. 'My life insurance policy?' he repeated.
  Vanderdecker put down his glass. 'After four hundred and fifty years,' he said, 'you want to sell me life insurance. Don't you people ever give up?'
  But Jane was shaking her head. 'We don't want to sell you any life insurance,' she said, 'we want to buy it.'
  As she stared at him, a tiny germen of a thought thrust a green blade through its shell in the back paddock of her mind. It was an extraordinary thought, but it was there.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Jane giggled. 'But Julius,' she said, 'you're invulnerable and immortal, nothing's dangerous to you. You can't be afraid of hovercraft.'
  Jane smiled, and shook her head. Would she be like him in four hundred years or so, or would he always keep this start on her?
  They launched a dinghy and set out to investigate. Business had been slack lately, what with the new initiative (nobody knew where it had started) to phase out nuclear power worldwide, and for once there was no shortage of volunteers.
  As he walked down the ladder, Vanderdecker paused and looked out over the sea. Very big, the sea, an awful lot of it, like history, or life. The hell with it.
  Vanderdecker smiled at him, nodded, and went below again, banging his head on a low girder as he did so. I'll get used to it, he thought, in time.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Jane giggled. 'But Julius,' she said, 'you're invulnerable and immortal, nothing's dangerous to you. You can't be afraid of hovercraft.'
  Jane smiled, and shook her head. Would she be like him in four hundred years or so, or would he always keep this start on her?
  They launched a dinghy and set out to investigate. Business had been slack lately, what with the new initiative (nobody knew where it had started) to phase out nuclear power worldwide, and for once there was no shortage of volunteers.
  As he walked down the ladder, Vanderdecker paused and looked out over the sea. Very big, the sea, an awful lot of it, like history, or life. The hell with it.
  Vanderdecker smiled at him, nodded, and went below again, banging his head on a low girder as he did so.