conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Subtle Bodies about Nina, Douglas, Ned with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Ned and Nina are working hard to get pregnant. But when Ned suddenly flies across the country to attend the funeral of college friend Douglas, Nina follows in hot pursuit. When she finally catches up with him, Nina finds her husband holed up in Douglas upstate New York compound, surrounded by his former NYU roommates, instantly immersed in the rivalries and politics of their student days. Ninas role as an outsider gives her a unique perspective on the group as she watches them grapple with the death of their revered Douglas and attempt to reappraise their lives, relationships, and futures through the clarifying lens of the passage of time. the author, author of the National Book Awardwinning Mating (1991), has written a quiet, contemplative novel, bringing together a group of people whose pasts and presents have suddenly come face-to-face as they struggle to make sense of their personal histories. Subtle Bodies is a funny, deeply satisfying look at friendshipswhy we make them, why we keep them, and how they change us over time. --Carol Gladstein
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But when Ned suddenly flies across the country to attend the funeral of college friend Douglas, Nina follows in hot pursuit. When she finally catches up with him, Nina finds her husband holed up in Douglas upstate New York compound, surrounded by his former NYU roommates, instantly immersed in the rivalries and politics of their student days. Ninas role as an outsider gives her a unique perspective on the group as she watches them grapple with the death of their revered Douglas and attempt to reappraise their lives, relationships, and futures through the clarifying lens of the passage of time. the author, author of the National Book Awardwinning Mating (1991), has written a quiet, contemplative novel, bringing together a group of people whose pasts and presents have suddenly come face-to-face as they struggle to make sense of their personal histories. Subtle Bodies is a funny, deeply satisfying look at friendshipswhy we make them, why we keep them, and how they change us over time. --Carol Gladstein
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Subtle Bodies
  He said, "She wrote to you?" Immediately he regretted saying it. Because he had cut himself off from the position that he knew all about it and it was nothing, which would have left him a shred of dignity. But then probably he had done the right thing by admitting his ignorance, because the letters themselves would have declared that fact.
  He thought, Great, he admired us because we lived at the material level of graduate students. In the name of something. Ned was drowning in bitterness. And now he was wondering about something else, Claire's little windfalls, little freshets of cash every now and then, things she got at thrift shops that looked too good for what she claimed she'd spent. Birthdays, cash from family members even though she was estranged from pretty much every single one of them. Don't be inventing things, he said to himself. He had to get away from this. He got up but sat down again immediately. They weren't through. The kitchen woman brought mugs of coffee on a tray. He was going to stop thinking of Iva's staff people as retainers. And he had to stop being a dumb prick about people living so fucking comfortably. He had lived his life a certain way, so enough.
  Her purpose, with him—if that's what it had been—seemed to have been accomplished. The news she had given him was like acid. The membranes between things in his mind that should be kept separate were being eaten away. He could think of a few more things he would like to know about Claire. He wouldn't ask. He would not.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But now, Ned was not through. "So Eight. And this is an add-on, and I'm just about to shut up. But do you remember when Bush One egged on the southern Shia to rise up against Saddam and then let him slaughter them from the air because our no-fly zone didn't cover his helicopters? That wasn't an oversight, it was a plan... it reduced the power of the Shia to mess up our plan for replacing Saddam Hussein with the general of our choice.
  Ned felt an old fantasy revenge daydream show up again. The prior stars in it had been Nixon and Pol Pot and LBJ. Now it was George W. Bush. Wars end. An invisible refrigerator repository hangs over the head of the victor president. The repository is full of body parts. Anyplace the conqueror goes limbs and parts rain down on him. It would be irregular. Sometimes for a while nothing would fall. The president would begin to feel safe. But he would be wrong and the stinking bloody arms and legs and heads and feet would fall on him again. Jokes in particular would be a trigger. George Bush would never be able to tell a joke anywhere without a severed hand falling on his podium, or plate, or lap. The president stops smiling.
  Ned thanked god because Joris was motioning for the pen. He felt light on his feet, as light on his feet as a two-legged marshmallow, which was a line from one of their ancient subway platform games, Absurd Similes.
  Ned said, "Gruen beat me to the yogurt but don't despair, I have a contact for you. Her name is Nadine Rose and she's very nice, and when I asked her for it and she had to deny me she said, 'I shall put it upon my list.' And those eggs were about to be deviled, but I seized them. And Nadine Rose is the person to go to for cravings. It's all arranged."
  Nina said, "There's something not on the surface between Joris and Iva. He can hardly look at her. And something happened in the hall last night that has something to do with it but I don't know what."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But now, Ned was not through. "So Eight. And this is an add-on, and I'm just about to shut up. But do you remember when Bush One egged on the southern Shia to rise up against Saddam and then let him slaughter them from the air because our no-fly zone didn't cover his helicopters? That wasn't an oversight, it was a plan... it reduced the power of the Shia to mess up our plan for replacing Saddam Hussein with the general of our choice.
  Ned felt an old fantasy revenge daydream show up again. The prior stars in it had been Nixon and Pol Pot and LBJ. Now it was George W. Bush. Wars end. An invisible refrigerator repository hangs over the head of the victor president. The repository is full of body parts. Anyplace the conqueror goes limbs and parts rain down on him. It would be irregular. Sometimes for a while nothing would fall. The president would begin to feel safe. But he would be wrong and the stinking bloody arms and legs and heads and feet would fall on him again. Jokes in particular would be a trigger. George Bush would never be able to tell a joke anywhere without a severed hand falling on his podium, or plate, or lap. The president stops smiling.
  Ned thanked god because Joris was motioning for the pen. He felt light on his feet, as light on his feet as a two-legged marshmallow, which was a line from one of their ancient subway platform games, Absurd Similes.
  Ned said, "Gruen beat me to the yogurt but don't despair, I have a contact for you. Her name is Nadine Rose and she's very nice, and when I asked her for it and she had to deny me she said, 'I shall put it upon my list.' And those eggs were about to be deviled, but I seized them. And Nadine Rose is the person to go to for cravings. It's all arranged."
  Nina said, "There's something not on the surface between Joris and Iva. He can hardly look at her. And something happened in the hall last night that has something to do with it but I don't know what.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Everything was good. He had a rising feeling in his chest like nothing he had ever felt. The signs could use improvement. Some of Douglas's inventions would have made good signs, like War Is the Continuation of Business as Usual by Any Means Necessary, and Strike When the Gorgon Blinks. They were too literary, but still.
  Everything was good. Two exile Cuban anarchist groups that had been fighting forever were marching together under a common banner saying Frente Libertario. Go, old men! he wanted to shout. He knew some of them. Maybe one or two of them might notice him there. He waved violently. He went right to the parapet to try to signal his presence. Their eyesight might not be up to it. Racially, everything was okay and looking better. It had been Nina's idea to contact the step dance teams in the black high schools. There was a huge contingent from McClymonds. He wanted to be everywhere in the march. Except with the drum groups, which were unbearably loud. He felt drunk with gratitude and the conviction of victory. He thought, You can't control everything... but this we can control. There would be no war. In part because of them there would be no war in Iraq. A few new people had come onto the overhang and he was going to shake hands with them, too. There would be no war. He thought, No war, No invasion, No.
  Back in the seventies, five young men were close college friends. Twenty-five years later—just as the U.S. is set to invade Iraq—the friends gather to mourn Douglas, the leader of their witty band, who has died suddenly in a riding-mower accident. Ned, who had been in thrall to Douglas, rushes away from his life in California to join the others in New York's Catskill mountains, where a memorial will take place at Douglas's estate. But Ned leaves behind his 36-year-old wife, Nina, who is trying to conceive with the help of fertility drugs, and he has left town just as she is about to ovulate. Incensed, Nina follows him East, and is soon on the scene to observe the drama caused by Douglas's death. Some struggle is going on between Elliot, one of the remaining friends, and Iva, Douglas's dramatically seductive widow, about how Douglas should be memorialized. Alone among the group, Ned has still committed himself to political activism and is currently organizing an antiwar march; he is baffled that his old friends are refusing to sign his petition against the impending invasion.
  Nina lets Ned know what she thinks of his fallen idol, and of his nostalgia for the group's past antics under Douglas's leadership. Meanwhile, Ned struggles to make sense of the powerful emotions he feels toward his friends, assisted by the even more powerful excitement, laughter, and joy provoked in him by Nina. In this delightfully intelligent story of love and friendship, Rush suspends his hero between his past and future, forcing him to see both anew.