conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled After The War about County, War, Tennessee with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Just as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County is a microcosm of the anguish of the post-Civil War South, so the author's Bourbon County in eastern Tennessee is a mirror of the anxieties, racial tensions and xenophobia of mainstream America in the aftermath of World War I. Paul Alexander, the narrator of this magnificent novel, is a Greek immigrant raised in Belgium who is haunted by the specters of his two closest friends, both killed alongside him in battle. As Alexander, himself a wounded young veteran, adjusts to life in provincial Tennessee, where he works as a chemist in an iron foundry, the shades of his two dead buddies--or his hallucination of them--interact with him and comment ironically on the action. Bourbonville's crises turn on the conflict of values between Moreland Pinkerton, a crude, expansive foundry owner emblematic of untamed industrial progress, and Brian Ledbetter, an old independent farmer with five wayward stepsons. Writing with the depth and veracity of classic realist fiction, the author ( Bound for the Promised Land ) spins subplots about Paul's search for the cowardly father who abandoned him; Paul's passionate but loveless affair with an older woman; and a black WW I pilot's visions of political revolution. A wondrous odyssey, this moving novel is a deep meditation on whether our lives are shaped by destiny or a chain of accidents. <BR>Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <BR>Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.. A wondrous odyssey, this moving novel is a deep meditation on whether our lives are shaped by destiny or a chain of accidents. Writing with the depth and veracity of classic realist fiction, the author ( Bound for the Promised Land ) spins subplots about Paul's search for the cowardly father who abandoned him; Paul's passionate but loveless affair with an older woman; and a black WW I pilot's visions of political revolution. Bourbonville's crises turn on the conflict of values between Moreland Pinkerton, a crude, expansive foundry owner emblematic of untamed industrial progress, and Brian Ledbetter, an old independent farmer with five wayward stepsons. As Alexander, himself a wounded young veteran, adjusts to life in provincial Tennessee, where he works as a chemist in an iron foundry, the shades of his two dead buddies--or his hallucination of them--interact with him and comment ironically on the action. Paul Alexander, the narrator of this magnificent novel, is a Greek immigrant raised in Belgium who is haunted by the specters of his two closest friends, both killed alongside him in battle.Just as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County is a microcosm of the anguish of the post-Civil War South, so the author's Bourbon County in eastern Tennessee is a mirror of the anxieties, racial tensions and xenophobia of mainstream America in the aftermath of World War I
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about War, Pinehill, Baird with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'After the War'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about County, War, Tennessee.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After the War (novel): Shortly after the end of World War II, Ruth Mendenberg is released from a death camp in Buchenwald, one of Hitler\'s concentration camps.\nRuth returns to her hometown in Poland and quickly learns that both her home and her family are gone.\nAt the age of 15, she loses her faith, and lives with the guilt of being the only surviving member of her family.\nShe meets a young man named Saul from Eretz Israel, who encourages recently liberated Jews to migrate to Mandate Palestine and its relative freedoms along with other Jewish refugees.\nShe is housed along with other recently liberated Jews, which include men and women of all ages.\nAlthough Ruth believes there is no hope, she agrees to migrate with the refugees, since, as she puts it, ″she has nothing better to do".\nThe house is attacked by an angry mob after a Polish child accuses some of the refugees of kidnapping and murdering some of the children in the village.\nShe is forced to hide, until the soldiers quiet the mob.\nShortly after she is forced to flee, along with 20 children.\nReluctantly, she becomes one of the youth leaders.\nThe group goes on foot through Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Italy.\nThe goal: make it to Palestine.\nTold in the first person, the story is compact and a relatively quick read.\nAfter the War focuses on one young woman\'s experiences after surviving the Holocaust.\nIt shows the continuing struggle of Holocaust survivors, as well as the lack of sympathy for these survivors, immediately after the end of the war in eastern Europe.\nThis story is intended for readers who are teenagers and young adults.\nThe graphic descriptions of violence, especially against children, may be too intense for readers under the age of 12.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first paragraph for this story.. End with the sentence ' If they had known about Derek and Cynthia, they would have given that some thought, and much talk, but so far they did not.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After the War
  BY mid-August, in the third summer of the Second World War, heavy and relentless heat had yellowed all the grass and almost all the flowers in the little college town of Pinehill, in the middle South. Cynthia Baird, an actively unfaithful Navy wife, contemplated the limp petals that lay beneath what had been a beautiful display of roses, massed blossoms of gold to pink to white—although she was not thinking of roses, nor actually of the war, but rather of her lover, Derek McFall, the famous war correspondent. Derek, who was tall and blond and not in love with her, not at all. Cynthia thought too of her husband, Harry—Captain Harry Baird, USN, now in London—but less often than she thought of Derek; Harry and wartime London, as well as the war itself, were vague to Cynthia, as they were to most of the rest of that town. People there were more aware of the state of Cynthia's lawn and her flowers, of their own lawns and flowers, than of the terrible but distant war. If they had known about Derek and Cynthia, they would have given that some thought, and much talk, but so far they did not.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The day outside threatened heat, intensity—so unlike the clear cold chaste New England spring that Melanctha had left behind in Cambridge. Already on the pine boughs just outside her bedroom window (she had settled for the moment in that room), the pine needles in the sunlight were brilliantly green, too bright and sharp, strangely threatening, against a too bright blue sky. Fat white clouds lay heavily on the horizon. Nothing moved.
  Melanctha had already left that room, then, and was halfway downstairs when a light knock sounded on the front door. Expecting no one—no one in her family would be home until about five, or later, and besides, none of them would knock—Melanctha hesitated, unaccountably afraid. Although it would only be some passing friend; strangers never came down that backwoods road in Pinehill in those days.
  But opening the door she saw that it was indeed a stranger, and a Negro: a very tall, light-skinned (yellowish-brown) old-looking (tired, perhaps, or maybe sick) young man. His great brown eyes red-rimmed. In cheap-looking, newish clothes. Who looked scared.
  He followed her into the living room, but before she could tell him to sit down, as she was about to do, he began.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The day outside threatened heat, intensity—so unlike the clear cold chaste New England spring that Melanctha had left behind in Cambridge. Already on the pine boughs just outside her bedroom window (she had settled for the moment in that room), the pine needles in the sunlight were brilliantly green, too bright and sharp, strangely threatening, against a too bright blue sky. Fat white clouds lay heavily on the horizon. Nothing moved.
  Melanctha had already left that room, then, and was halfway downstairs when a light knock sounded on the front door. Expecting no one—no one in her family would be home until about five, or later, and besides, none of them would knock—Melanctha hesitated, unaccountably afraid. Although it would only be some passing friend; strangers never came down that backwoods road in Pinehill in those days.
  But opening the door she saw that it was indeed a stranger, and a Negro: a very tall, light-skinned (yellowish-brown) old-looking (tired, perhaps, or maybe sick) young man. His great brown eyes red-rimmed. In cheap-looking, newish clothes. Who looked scared.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Melanctha put her hands over River's ears, such beautiful long brown silky ears. She knew that he didn't like music; he disliked it almost as much as he disliked thunder, and guns. And she was sure that he would especially not like this goopy garbage.
  Deirdre, who had always liked this song, tried not to cry. She was reminded of so many things, mostly dances back in high school, all those good-looking boys, lots of them probably dead by now in the war. And Derek somewhere on the sidelines of the dance, cross, superior, and more handsome than anyone." He smiled, and as though they were about to dance he said, "About Georgetown, what I mean is, you have to come back and live with me. And be my love."
  Watching them from the kitchen door, joyfully, Dolly told Odessa, who was just behind her, "They're renewing their vows! Oh, I just knew it."
  Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Harry, Shalimar.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Melanctha put her hands over River's ears, such beautiful long brown silky ears. She knew that he didn't like music; he disliked it almost as much as he disliked thunder, and guns. And she was sure that he would especially not like this goopy garbage. 
  Deirdre, who had always liked this song, tried not to cry. She was reminded of so many things, mostly dances back in high school, all those good-looking boys, lots of them probably dead by now in the war. And Derek somewhere on the sidelines of the dance, cross, superior, and more handsome than anyone. 
  Harry said, "Shalimar, the only true scent. " He smiled, and as though they were about to dance he said, "About Georgetown, what I mean is, you have to come back and live with me. And be my love. "
  Watching them from the kitchen door, joyfully, Dolly told Odessa, who was just behind her, "They're renewing their vows! Oh, I just knew it. "
  Alice Adams was born in Virginia and graduated from Radcliffe College. She was the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in San Francisco until her death in 1999.