conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Travels with Charley in Search of America about ldquo;Pure, York, Times with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Arts & Literature.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: &ldquo;Pure delight, a pungent potpourri of places and people interspersed with bittersweet essays on everything from the emotional difficulties of growing old to the reasons why giant sequoias arouse such awe.&rdquo; &#151;The New York Times Book Review
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for the story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Travels with Charley in Search of America
  It must be said that by 1960, if not earlier, Steinbeck had grown fairly disenchanted with his country; he thought that consumerism and selfishness had begun to run rampant, destroying the community values he regarded as vital to the nation's moral health. In a letter to Adlai Stevenson (whose two unsuccessful presidential bids had frustrated Steinbeck), he complained about the "cynical immorality" of the United States. "Having too many THINGS," he says, "[Americans] spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick."
  In the fall—right after Labor Day—I'm going to learn about my own country. I've lost the flavor and taste and sound of it. It's been years since I have seen it. Soooo! I'm buying a pick-up truck with a small apartment on it, kind of like the cabin of a small boat, bed, stove, desk, ice-box, toilet—not a trailer—what's called a coach. I'm going alone, out toward the West by the northern way but zigzagging through the Middle West and the mountain states. I'll avoid cities, hit small towns and farms and ranches, sit in bars and hamburger stands and on Sunday go to church. I'll go down the coast from Washington and Oregon and then back through the Southwest and South and up the East Coast but always zigzagging. Elaine will join me occasionally but mostly I have to go alone, and I shall go unknown. I just want to look and listen. What I'll get I need badly—a reknowledge of my own country, of its speeches, its views, its attitudes and its changes. It's long overdue—very long.
  A branch floated by in the water, and Steinbeck jumped in after it. The wind happened to be driving toward the shore, so all he had to do was hang onto the branch and let it pull him in. Before long, Elaine saw his head bobbing in the water. Soon he was back at the kitchen table, a whisky between his palms, with a towel around his head.
  Steinbeck set off from Sag Harbor on the morning of September 23, 1960, with Charley, his tall and gregarious French poodle, for company. "I remember when he asked to take Charley Dog," his wife later recalled. "He said rather meekly, 'This is a big favor I'm going to ask, Elaine. Can I take Charley?' 'What a good idea,' I said, 'if you get into any kind of trouble, Charley can go get help.' John looked at me sternly and said, 'Elaine, Charley isn't Lassie.'" He drove north toward Massachusetts, stopping by to visit John, the youngest of his two sons, at the Eaglebrook School in Deerfield. From there, he moved north through Vermont and east through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Steinbeck writes: "The climate changed quickly to cold and the trees burst into color, the reds and yellows you can't believe. It isn't only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'For myself, I try to keep the line open even for things I can't understand or explain, but it is difficult in this frightened time'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For myself, I try to keep the line open even for things I can't understand or explain, but it is difficult in this frightened time. At this moment in North Dakota I had a reluctance to drive on that amounted to fear. At the same time, Charley wanted to go—in fact, made such a commotion about going that I tried to reason with him.
  We stayed and it didn't snow and no tree fell, so naturally we forgot the whole thing and are wide open for more mystic feelings when they come. And in the early morning swept clean of clouds and telescopically clear, we crunched around on the thick white ground cover of frost and got under way. The caravan of the arts was dark but the dog barked as we ground up to the highway.
  Someone must have told me about the Missouri River at Bismarck, North Dakota, or I must have read about it. In either case, I hadn't paid attention. I came on it in amazement. Here is where the map should fold. Here is the boundary between east and west. On the Bismarck side it is eastern landscape, eastern grass, with the look and smell of eastern America. Across the Missouri on the Mandan side, it is pure west, with brown grass and water scorings and small outcrops. The two sides of the river might well be a thousand miles apart. As I was not prepared for the Missouri boundary, so I was not prepared for the Bad Lands. They deserve this name. They are like the work of an evil child. Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding. A sense comes from it that it does not like or welcome humans. But humans being what they are, and I being human, I turned off the highway on a shaley road and headed in among the buttes, but with a shyness as though I crashed a party. The road surface tore viciously at my tires and made Rocinante's overloaded springs cry with anguish. What a place for a colony of troglodytes, or better, of trolls. And here's an odd thing. Just as I felt unwanted in this land, so do I feel a reluctance in writing about it.
  Presently I saw a man leaning on a two-strand barbed-wire fence, the wires fixed not to posts but to crooked tree limbs stuck in the ground. The man wore a dark hat, and jeans and long jacket washed palest blue with lighter places at knees and elbows. His pale eyes were frosted with sun glare and his lips scaly as snakeskin. A.22 rifle leaned against the fence beside him and on the ground lay a little heap of fur and feathers—rabbits and small birds. I pulled up to speak to him, saw his eyes wash over Rocinante, sweep up the details, and then retire into their sockets. And I found I had nothing to say to him. The "Looks like an early winter," or "Any good fishing hereabouts?" didn't seem to apply. And so we simply brooded at each other.
  I waited for him to ask something or to say something so we could go on, but he didn't. And as the silence continued, it became more and more impossible to think of something to say. I made one more try. "Does it get very cold here winters?"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The morning was like the Christmas song—"where the snow lay all about, deep and soft and even." And the sun turned it glittering. In the night the Army had been out plowing the main thoroughfares. And true to form, I got us to our seats below the rostrum at the Capitol long before the ceremony, so long before that we nearly froze. Mark Twain defined women as lovely creatures with a backache. I wonder how he omitted the only other safe generality—goddesses with cold feet. A warm-footed woman would be a monstrosity.
  I think I was the only man there who heard the inauguration while holding his wife's feet in his lap, rubbing vigorously. With every sentence of the interminable prayers, I rubbed. And the prayers were interesting, if long. One sounded like general orders to the deity issued in a parade-ground voice. One prayer brought God up to date on current events with a view to their revision. In the midst of one prayer, smoke issued from the lectern and I thought we had gone too far but it turned out to be a short circuit.
  How startling then to hear the simple stark oath of office offered and accepted. How moving. How deeply moving. I had never seen the ceremony before and it was good and I was glad.
  Only one episode remains to be told and then my travels with Charley are finished. And we have never admitted this scene although we haven't out and out lied about it. Remember when you have visited some foreign area and some other traveler has asked. "Did you see such and such?" If you say no he screams, "What? Why that was the best." We have learned to reply to the question, "Wonderful." Or "Remarkable!" That doesn't say we did or didn't see it and saves the argument.
  Well, we were invited to the Inaugural Ball, the biggest and most desirable one where thousands of people would gather, where all the new dresses and satin shoes and hairdos would be. In the house of our hostess, other guests were ready, fingers moving restlessly in filmy cloth or tucking in hair that had never escaped, and every mirror was a place for sidelong glances. Dress ties were patted reassuringly every few seconds. The radio said that traffic conditions were impossible. Mobs of people, beautifully dressed, were floundering through snowdrifts and the great black official cars chugged through streets clanking chains. We drank together a last glass of champagne. And then everyone was gone and the house was quiet and the low lights were soft and the room a cushion of warm comfort. It was automatic. We didn't plan it. We drank another glass of wine looking out at the mountains of snow and then we crept up to our room and put on dressing gowns. In the kitchen we made sandwiches and arranged trays. Then I stood the great and important tickets of invitation to the ball on top of the television and turned on the set. We saw the President and his lady right up close and we saw the packed thousands below in crushed and snow-dabbled ball gowns. We nibbled our sandwiches and had a tall drink. And afterwards, when asked how we liked the Inaugural Ball, we have said, "Loved it. Remarkable. Wonderful!" And so it was. And we saw much more of it than the ones who were there. I guess it was the best ball I was ever invited to, and I enjoyed it the most, too.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Don't.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The morning was like the Christmas song—"where the snow lay all about, deep and soft and even. " And the sun turned it glittering. In the night the Army had been out plowing the main thoroughfares. And true to form, I got us to our seats below the rostrum at the Capitol long before the ceremony, so long before that we nearly froze. Mark Twain defined women as lovely creatures with a backache. I wonder how he omitted the only other safe generality—goddesses with cold feet. A warm-footed woman would be a monstrosity. 
  I think I was the only man there who heard the inauguration while holding his wife's feet in his lap, rubbing vigorously. With every sentence of the interminable prayers, I rubbed. And the prayers were interesting, if long. One sounded like general orders to the deity issued in a parade-ground voice. One prayer brought God up to date on current events with a view to their revision. In the midst of one prayer, smoke issued from the lectern and I thought we had gone too far but it turned out to be a short circuit. 
  How startling then to hear the simple stark oath of office offered and accepted. How moving. How deeply moving. I had never seen the ceremony before and it was good and I was glad. 
  Only one episode remains to be told and then my travels with Charley are finished. And we have never admitted this scene although we haven't out and out lied about it. Remember when you have visited some foreign area and some other traveler has asked. "Did you see such and such?" If you say no he screams, "What? Why that was the best. Don't see why you went at all if you didn't see such and such. " We have learned to reply to the question, "Wonderful. " Or "Remarkable!" That doesn't say we did or didn't see it and saves the argument. 
  Well, we were invited to the Inaugural Ball, the biggest and most desirable one where thousands of people would gather, where all the new dresses and satin shoes and hairdos would be. In the house of our hostess, other guests were ready, fingers moving restlessly in filmy cloth or tucking in hair that had never escaped, and every mirror was a place for sidelong glances. Dress ties were patted reassuringly every few seconds. The radio said that traffic conditions were impossible. Mobs of people, beautifully dressed, were floundering through snowdrifts and the great black official cars chugged through streets clanking chains. We drank together a last glass of champagne. And then everyone was gone and the house was quiet and the low lights were soft and the room a cushion of warm comfort. It was automatic. We didn't plan it. We drank another glass of wine looking out at the mountains of snow and then we crept up to our room and put on dressing gowns. In the kitchen we made sandwiches and arranged trays. Then I stood the great and important tickets of invitation to the ball on top of the television and turned on the set. We saw the President and his lady right up close and we saw the packed thousands below in crushed and snow-dabbled ball gowns. We nibbled our sandwiches and had a tall drink. And afterwards, when asked how we liked the Inaugural Ball, we have said, "Loved it. Remarkable. Wonderful!" And so it was. And we saw much more of it than the ones who were there. I guess it was the best ball I was ever invited to, and I enjoyed it the most, too.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.. Start with the sentence 'Travels with Charley in Search of America
  I was advised that the name Rocinante painted on the side of my truck in sixteenth-century Spanish script would cause curiosity and inquiry in some places'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Travels with Charley in Search of America
  I was advised that the name Rocinante painted on the side of my truck in sixteenth-century Spanish script would cause curiosity and inquiry in some places. I do not know how many people recognized the name, but surely no one ever asked about it.
  Next, I was told that a stranger's purpose in moving about the country might cause inquiry or even suspicion. For this reason I racked a shotgun, two rifles, and a couple of fishing rods in my truck, for it is my experience that if a man is going hunting or fishing his purpose is understood and even applauded. Actually, my hunting days are over. I no longer kill or catch anything I cannot get into a frying pan; I am too old for sport killing. This stage setting turned out to be unnecessary.
  It was said that my New York license plates would arouse interest and perhaps questions, since they were the only outward identifying marks I had. And so they did—perhaps twenty or thirty times in the whole trip. But such contacts followed an invariable pattern, somewhat as follows:
  Local man: "I was there in nineteen thirty-eight—or was it thirty-nine? Alice, was it thirty-eight or thirty-nine we went to New York?"
  The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' The place wasn't impressive enough to carry a stupendous fact like that.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Less than a mile from the entrance I saw a bear beside the road, and it ambled out as though to flag me down. Instantly a change came over Charley. He shrieked with rage. His lips flared, showing wicked teeth that have some trouble with a dog biscuit. He screeched insults at the bear, which hearing, the bear reared up and seemed to me to overtop Rocinante. Frantically I rolled the windows shut and, swinging quickly to the left, grazed the animal, then scuttled on while Charley raved and ranted beside me, describing in detail what he would do to that bear if he could get at him. I was never so astonished in my life. To the best of my knowledge Charley had never seen a bear, and in his whole history had showed great tolerance for every living thing. Besides all this, Charley is a coward, so deep-seated a coward that he has developed a technique for concealing it. And yet he showed every evidence of wanting to get out and murder a bear that outweighed him a thousand to one. I don't understand it.
  A little farther along two bears showed up, and the effect was doubled. Charley became a maniac. He leaped all over me, he cursed and growled, snarled and screamed. I didn't know he had the ability to snarl. Where did he learn it? Bears were in good supply, and the road became a nightmare. For the first time in his life Charley resisted reason, even resisted a cuff on the ear. He became a primitive killer lusting for the blood of his enemy, and up to this moment he had had no enemies. In a bearless stretch, I opened the cab, took Charley by the collar, and locked him in the house. But that did no good. When we passed other bears he leaped on the table and scratched at the windows trying to get out at them. I could hear canned goods crashing as he struggled in his mania. Bears simply brought out the Hyde in my Jekyll-headed dog. What could have caused it? Was it a pre-breed memory of a time when the wolf was in him? I know him well. Once in a while he tries a bluff, but it is a palpable lie. I swear that this was no lie. I am certain that if he were released he would have charged every bear we passed and found victory or death.
  It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane. No amount of natural wonders, of rigid cliffs and belching waters, of smoking springs could even engage my attention while that pandemonium went on. After about the fifth encounter I gave up, turned Rocinante about, and retraced my way. If I had stopped the night and bears had gathered to my cooking, I dare not think what would have happened.
  I moved fast, back the way I had come, and I was reluctant to camp for fear there might be some unofficial non-government bears about. That night I spent in a pretty auto court near Livingston. I had my dinner in a restaurant, and when I had settled in with a drink and a comfortable chair and my bathed bare feet on a carpet with red roses, I inspected Charley. He was dazed. His eyes held a faraway look and he was totally exhausted, emotionally no doubt. Mostly he reminded me of a man coming out of a long, hard drunk—worn out, depleted, collapsed. He couldn't eat his dinner, he refused the evening walk, and once we were in he collapsed on the floor and went to sleep. In the night I heard him whining and yapping, and when I turned on the light his feet were making running gestures and his body jerked and his eyes were wide open, but it was only a night bear. I awakened him and gave him some water. This time he went to sleep and didn't stir all night. In the morning he was still tired. I wonder why we think the thoughts and emotions of animals are simple.
  I remember as a child reading or hearing the words "The Great Divide" and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China. The Rocky Mountains are too big, too long, too important to have to be imposing. In Montana to which I had returned, the rise is gradual, and were it not for a painted sign I never would have known when I crossed it. It wasn't very high as elevations go. I passed it as I saw the sign, but I stopped and backed up and got out and straddled it. As I stood over it facing south it had a strange impact on me that rain falling on my right foot must fall into the Pacific Ocean, while that on my left foot would eventually find its way after uncountable miles to the Atlantic. The place wasn't impressive enough to carry a stupendous fact like that.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This powerful social novel, set in the California apple country, is a story of labor unrest in the migrant community and the search for identity of its protagonist, young Jim Nolan.
  First published in 1938, this collection of stories set in the rich farmland of Salinas Valley includes the O. Henry Prize-winning story "The Murder," as well as one of Steinbeck's most famous short works, "The Snake."
  Steinbeck's dispatches filed from the front lines during World War II vividly evoke the human side of the war.
  Steinbeck's only work of political satire turns the French Revolution upside down, creating the hilarious characters of the motley royal court of King Pippin.