conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled A Beautiful Truth about Looee, Walt, Judy with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The lives of humans and apes become intimately intertwined in this strangely captivating third novel from Canadian author the author. When Walt and Judy, a wealthy young couple, discover they are unable to have children, Walt uses his connections to adopt an orphaned Sierra Leone chimpanzee named Looee. Showering Looee with toys and devotion as he grows from diapers to adolescence, the pair ultimately raises a creature whose temperament is an uneasy mix of beast and man. After Looee explodes in a rare bout of rage, maiming Judy and a family friend, he is sent away for good to a primate-research facility in Florida and forced to make a traumatic adjustment to living among apes more adapted to their own company than to humans. the authors experimental narration shifts between human and chimp perspectives, often falling into impenetrable obtuseness in the latter. Yet most of the novel is grounded in solid research on chimp behavior that, along with the authors distinctive poetic prose, informs readers while enriching a deeply moving story. --Carl Hays
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Beautiful Truth
  There were reports from field studies in Africa, from Gombe and the Japanese groups. Much of it was anecdotal in the early days. Chimpanzees have culture. In Gombe the chimps were wiping ants off sticks with their hands and bringing the wad of ants to their mouths, but in the Taï Forest they were bringing the sticks directly to their mouths. This was behaviour that they had learned and passed down through observation and imitation. Strangers would be recognized by how they ate. At the time, most Americans were eating with their forks in their right hands, and being mocked by Europeans for doing so.
  David used to envy the people doing the field studies. There was a growing rivalry between those who worked with apes in labs and those who observed them in the wild. Do we know them better when they interact with humans or do we only understand the traits we have in common. Isn't it best to see them behave as chimps in the wild, or is every ape, humans included, always adapting to some sort of culture imposed by others. They were seen to marvel at waterfalls and to act unusually when they saw some wonder of nature. There were chimps in Kibale who used small sticks to clear their noses, and there were others who laid floors of branches across thorny ground to protect their feet.
  David wanted to see these things in the wild, but he also had plenty of his own stories, his own examples of culture and of inventiveness. Much was made of the fact that the Ugandan chimps used a unique hand clasp when grooming—something that no other colonies were seen to do. At Girdish, when the field station grew and the population was stable, Podo clapped his hands whenever he wanted to be groomed, a ritual Podo would not have seen anywhere else. All the others in the colony copied him. As new apes were introduced they either learned to clap or were shunned. Wherever they are, apes invent culture, and their culture is strengthened through the exclusion of others.
  So while David heard field reports and felt excited by the broader world, he felt as though he had his own small country here. There were experiments that made him feel he was part of a family, and his memories of the early days are not just of youthful enthusiasm but of iconoclasm. Like all his younger colleagues, he wanted to demolish beliefs about what it meant to be human.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about doing, displaying, rained.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Beautiful Truth
  There were reports from field studies in Africa, from Gombe and the Japanese groups. Much of it was anecdotal in the early days. Chimpanzees have culture. In Gombe the chimps were wiping ants off sticks with their hands and bringing the wad of ants to their mouths, but in the Taï Forest they were bringing the sticks directly to their mouths. This was behaviour that they had learned and passed down through observation and imitation. Strangers would be recognized by how they ate. At the time, most Americans were eating with their forks in their right hands, and being mocked by Europeans for doing so. 
  David used to envy the people doing the field studies. There was a growing rivalry between those who worked with apes in labs and those who observed them in the wild. Do we know them better when they interact with humans or do we only understand the traits we have in common. Isn't it best to see them behave as chimps in the wild, or is every ape, humans included, always adapting to some sort of culture imposed by others. 
  From the field came reports of chimps doing dances or displaying whenever it rained. They were seen to marvel at waterfalls and to act unusually when they saw some wonder of nature. There were chimps in Kibale who used small sticks to clear their noses, and there were others who laid floors of branches across thorny ground to protect their feet. 
  David wanted to see these things in the wild, but he also had plenty of his own stories, his own examples of culture and of inventiveness. Much was made of the fact that the Ugandan chimps used a unique hand clasp when grooming—something that no other colonies were seen to do. At Girdish, when the field station grew and the population was stable, Podo clapped his hands whenever he wanted to be groomed, a ritual Podo would not have seen anywhere else. All the others in the colony copied him. As new apes were introduced they either learned to clap or were shunned. Wherever they are, apes invent culture, and their culture is strengthened through the exclusion of others. 
  So while David heard field reports and felt excited by the broader world, he felt as though he had his own small country here. There were experiments that made him feel he was part of a family, and his memories of the early days are not just of youthful enthusiasm but of iconoclasm. Like all his younger colleagues, he wanted to demolish beliefs about what it meant to be human.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The ten chimpanzees all have their own cage, five by five by seven feet tall, fixed to a wall and suspended two feet above the ground. Five are on one side and five on the other and their cages are two feet apart. Lonee's feet haven't touched the ground in five years.
  A new caregiver named Martin arrived at Girdish last week and today he was asked to do a simple walkthrough and tag. He stands at the anteroom door and looks through the window. When CH 563 (Spud) sees Martin's face he raises the alarm and the wing fills with the hoots that say a stranger is coming. Spud doesn't remember Martin's face.
  Martin pulls the hood of his Tyvek suit over his head and the mask over his mouth. He puts the face shield on and a third layer of latex gloves and remembers the look on Lisa's face when he told her the chimps might have AIDS. Seven months is the longest he's had a girlfriend.
  Martin waits for the labtech, Frank, to dress out, and they open the door and walk. Frank told Martin not to let them know you're afraid.
  Spud spits on Martin's head and so do Pepper and Nathan. The closest sounds to Martin are of liquid slapping Tyvek but the sound that puts his hair on end is of the ten in unified hostility, reminding the concrete that it wasn't always there and may not always stand.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last three paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'I am grateful for the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I am grateful for the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
  This novel owes a debt to the research and stories of Frans de Waal, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Roger Fouts, Herbert Terrace, Jane Goodall, Rachel Weiss, Maurice Temerlin, Vince Smith, as well as to the stories of many like Pepper and Billy Jo who neither wrote nor spoke.
  My great thanks go to Nancy Megna for being generous with time and recollections. And the same to Gloria Grow and assistants at the Fauna Foundation, for showing me medical files and letting me meet your friends. It was a genuine honour to spend time with Sue Ellen, Rachel, Jethro, Regis, Spock, Binky, Chance, Yoko, Maya, Petra, and the noble, storied Tom (RIP). I mourn the loss of Pepper.