conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled The Italian Teacher about Bears, Pinchs, strong><a with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <strong><a href="//www.amazon.com/b/?node=17143709011">An Amazon Best Book of March 2018:</a></strong> What if your father was one of the 20th centurys most celebrated painters: Julian Schnabel, say, or Lucian Freud? How would you define yourself against that kind of talent and machismo? In <em>The Italian Teacher</em>, his utterly absorbing third novel, the author sets in play just that dynamic. Bear Bavinsky is a world-famous painter, a first-class narcissist, and father of seventeen children, whom he treats with careless, sometimes callous, warmth. Bears shy son Pinch loves to paint, but his ambitions are snuffed by his fathers offhand critique: I got to tell you, kiddo. Youre not an artist and you never will be. After that, nothing in Pinchs life seems to gel -- until after Bears death, when Pinchs role as caretaker of his fathers legacy grants him scope to come into his own. Ironies abound.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Ironies abound.amazon.com/b/?node=17143709011">An Amazon Best Book of March 2018:</a></strong> What if your father was one of the 20th centurys most celebrated painters: Julian Schnabel, say, or Lucian Freud? How would you define yourself against that kind of talent and machismo? In <em>The Italian Teacher</em>, his utterly absorbing third novel, the author sets in play just that dynamic. Bear Bavinsky is a world-famous painter, a first-class narcissist, and father of seventeen children, whom he treats with careless, sometimes callous, warmth. Bears shy son Pinch loves to paint, but his ambitions are snuffed by his fathers offhand critique: I got to tell you, kiddo. Youre not an artist and you never will be. After that, nothing in Pinchs life seems to gel -- until after Bears death, when Pinchs role as caretaker of his fathers legacy grants him scope to come into his own.<strong><a href="//www.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Italian Teacher
  Pinch nods sadly, stroking the tablecloth, breadcrumbs jumping. "All I can do is encourage them to sell to reputable collectors."
  Over the next days, Connor takes notes and photographs, and tape-records their conversations. Pinch hides his nerves, awaiting the moment to admit what he's done. He's going to climb up to the attic, where he's hidden the three originals, and lug each down in turn.
  Delaying this, he cooks a meal for his guest while Connor rambles away. The journalist alternately moons over the wizardry of Bear and frets about his flight home. Unfortunately, bombing Saddam into oblivion is the only option, he now argues. Otherwise, what? Risk dirty bombs in Times Square next? "Don't get me wrong. I hate and despise Dubya with a passion," Connor says. "But myself, as someone who lived the attacks, I can tell you that there's no negotiating with terrorists. A guy like George Bush, who's not plagued by mental quandaries—maybe he's the right man for the moment. You know?"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Starbucks, Upper, West.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Italian Teacher
  Pinch nods sadly, stroking the tablecloth, breadcrumbs jumping. "All I can do is encourage them to sell to reputable collectors. "
  Over the next days, Connor takes notes and photographs, and tape-records their conversations. Pinch hides his nerves, awaiting the moment to admit what he's done. He's going to climb up to the attic, where he's hidden the three originals, and lug each down in turn. 
  Delaying this, he cooks a meal for his guest while Connor rambles away. The journalist alternately moons over the wizardry of Bear and frets about his flight home. Last year, he stood in line at a Starbucks on the Upper West Side, ready to order his grande latte, when the first plane hit. Unfortunately, bombing Saddam into oblivion is the only option, he now argues. Otherwise, what? Risk dirty bombs in Times Square next? "Don't get me wrong. I hate and despise Dubya with a passion," Connor says. "But myself, as someone who lived the attacks, I can tell you that there's no negotiating with terrorists. A guy like George Bush, who's not plagued by mental quandaries—maybe he's the right man for the moment. You know?"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: One evening, Pinch is quizzing her about her one-time medical aspirations in China, curious as to why she never pursued that line of work. To his surprise, he discovers that she was political back in China, and that it destroyed her chances of serious study.
  She reaches out as if to touch him, then appears to change her mind. Theirs isn't that kind of relationship. They resume language practice. She is teaching him Sichuan, while he corrects her English idioms.
  He presses the tip of his sable brush into a shiny blue knob of paint, swipes the laden bristles across the center point of the canvas. Gingerly he proceeds outward, his nose close enough for its tip to become flecked with color. Many hours later he retreats, bashful to have painted himself. His gaze drifts down the shaft of the paintbrush, halting at his tight fingers. "Artists shouldn't question," Natalie once said. "We should just do, like ants."
  As the tide of sadness flows closer, he returns to work, misplacing himself there, though it's his own image taking shape before him. After a measureless stretch of time, he wipes his brushes on rags, drops them into the turps jar, and sits beside the spattered boom box on the floor, clicking a CD into action. His father required bopping jazz to work, but Pinch cannot hear music while painting. Only after.
  They often share meals; it's harder to shop for one. "If you're cooking tonight, make something horrible, so I don't overeat again," he says. "Look at this abomination." He lifts his shirt to expose his paunch.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Instead, this one cites "the erotic absence of the Life-Stills," noting that "from the sixties onward, a frequent claim against Bavinsky—strenuously denied by the artist—was that he was an aesthetic reactionary, and to some, a misogynist." But, it hastens to add, Bear redeemed himself in the purest way: through art, as shown in "the undeniable humanity of his Faces series."
  Marsden smiles. Bear gains his glory in the end! Though this isn't quite the end. There's fifty years hence, one hundred, five hundred, all diminishing toward that everlasting instant when nothing by human hand remains. But today, Bear is triumphant: strangers speaking his name, estimating his prices, dreaming of his objects on their walls.
  For a minute, the crowd clears. Marsden is alone in the room, standing before Pinch's paintings and Natalie's pots. He urges his eyes to hurry, to absorb this, to save this sight.
  Gradually other visitors drift in. He takes a last glance around, presses "Play" on the audio guide, and proceeds toward the exit. "From these masterpieces, Bear Bavinsky speaks," the narration concludes. "Even today, even beyond the grave—from these paintings, truly, we know him."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". "Even today, even beyond the grave—from these paintings, truly, we know him. "From these masterpieces, Bear Bavinsky speaks," the narration concludes. He takes a last glance around, presses "Play" on the audio guide, and proceeds toward the exit.
  Gradually other visitors drift in. He urges his eyes to hurry, to absorb this, to save this sight. Marsden is alone in the room, standing before Pinch's paintings and Natalie's pots.
  For a minute, the crowd clears. But today, Bear is triumphant: strangers speaking his name, estimating his prices, dreaming of his objects on their walls. There's fifty years hence, one hundred, five hundred, all diminishing toward that everlasting instant when nothing by human hand remains. Bear gains his glory in the end! Though this isn't quite the end."
  Marsden smiles." But, it hastens to add, Bear redeemed himself in the purest way: through art, as shown in "the undeniable humanity of his Faces series.Instead, this one cites "the erotic absence of the Life-Stills," noting that "from the sixties onward, a frequent claim against Bavinsky—strenuously denied by the artist—was that he was an aesthetic reactionary, and to some, a misogynist