conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Kurt, American, Slaughterhouse-Five with the genre: Humor & Entertainment, Humor?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Big Trip Up Yonder'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Big Trip Up Yonder
  At this point Gold was succumbing to agoraphobia, physical ills, and overall exhaustion (some of this perhaps attributable to his active service during WWII) against which he had struggled from the outset. (There is creditable evidence that Frederik Pohl was the de facto editor during Gold's last years.) Gold would return some submissions with notes like: "Garbage," "Absolute Crap." Isaac Asimov noted in his memoir "Anthony Boucher wrote rejection slips which read like acceptances. And Horace wrote notes of acceptance which felt like rejections." Despite this, the magazine retained most of its high standard and also some of its regular contributors (William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, Pohl himself). Others could no longer bear Gold's imperiousness and abusiveness.
  In an interview when he was about 75, Vonnegut talked to Eric Solstein about his own acquaintance with Sturgeon and about the Trout character, who he admitted was clearly modeled on the writer. Vonnegut talked of his love and admiration, but that was retrospective falsification. He hated and envied Sturgeon (who was a "real" science fiction writer and celebrated in the 50s when Vonnegut was known), and Kilgore Trout was a device to humiliate him. "Well," Vonnegut said to Solstein, "Sturgeon was kind of a starving writer when I knew him but he went on to later have a very successful career. He did very well for himself financially." Sturgeon, in fact, did not do very well, which Vonnegut surely knew. One interpretation of his work might be that it came from a conscious desire to mock science fiction and its writers and to humiliate them for the general public. The tormented Billy Pilgrim, survivor of Dresden, lover of Montana Wildhack, might have been an heroic figure, but he was also insane and ultimately a victim of his incapacity. Pilgrim might have been the lens through which Vonnegut saw himself.
  Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, where they had been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity—privacy—were obliged to take seats in the back row, behind Lou's father and mother, brother and sister-in-law, son and daughter-in-law, grandson and wife, granddaughter and husband, great-grandson and wife, nephew and wife, grandnephew and wife, great-grandniece and husband, great-grandnephew and wife—and, of course, Gramps, who was in front of everybody. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed, by pre-anti-gerasone standards, to be about the same age—somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since.
  He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.
  Lou nodded dully and found himself going down the hall, picking his way over bedding to Gramps' room, the only private room in the Ford apartment. The other rooms were the bathroom, the living room and the wide windowless hallway, which was originally intended to serve as a dining area, and which had a kitchenette in one end. Six mattresses and four sleeping bags were dispersed in the hallway and living room, and the daybed, in the living room, accommodated the eleventh couple, the favorites of the moment.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs? End with the sentence ' And the almost imperceptible smell of anti-gerasone, like Worcestershire sauce, now seemed to Lou, in his nervousness, to be pouring out into the rest of the apartment, through the keyhole and under the door.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He dozed for a few moments, until he was disturbed by someone stepping over him to get into the bathroom. A moment later, he heard a faint gurgling sound, as though something were being poured down the washbasin drain. Suddenly, it entered his mind that Em had cracked up, that she was in there doing something drastic about Gramps.
  Lou's great-grandnephew, Mortimer, who had just married and brought his wife home to the Ford menage, looked at Lou with consternation and surprise. Morty kicked the door shut, but not before Lou had glimpsed what was in his hand—Gramps' enormous economy-size bottle of anti-gerasone, which had apparently been half-emptied, and which Morty was refilling with tap water.
  A moment later, Morty came out, glared defiantly at Lou and brushed past him wordlessly to rejoin his pretty bride.
  Shocked, Lou didn't know what to do. He couldn't let Gramps take the mousetrapped anti-gerasone—but, if he warned Gramps about it, Gramps would certainly make life in the apartment, which was merely insufferable now, harrowing.
  The bottle contained a half-gallon, and its neck was small, so it seemed to Lou that the emptying would take forever. And the almost imperceptible smell of anti-gerasone, like Worcestershire sauce, now seemed to Lou, in his nervousness, to be pouring out into the rest of the apartment, through the keyhole and under the door.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For the next half-hour, patrol wagons and ambulances hauled away Fords, and then the apartment was still and spacious.
  An hour later, films of the last stages of the riot were being televised to 500,000,000 delighted viewers on the Eastern Seaboard.
  In the stillness of the three-room Ford apartment on the 76th floor of Building 257, the television set had been left on. Once more the air was filled with the cries and grunts and crashes of the fray, coming harmlessly now from the loudspeaker.
  The battle also appeared on the screen of the television set in the police station, where the Fords and their captors watched with professional interest. He had come in, a few minutes earlier, from the Idle Hour Tavern, which commanded a view of Building 257 from across the square of asphalt known as the Alden Village Green. He had called a cleaning woman to come straighten the place up, then had hired the best lawyer in town to get his descendants a conviction, a genius who had never gotten a client less than a year and a day. Gramps had then moved the day-bed before the television screen, so that he could watch from a reclining position. It was something he'd dreamed of doing for years.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Underlining, Gramps, Willy, Underlining, scratching.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For the next half-hour, patrol wagons and ambulances hauled away Fords, and then the apartment was still and spacious. 
  An hour later, films of the last stages of the riot were being televised to 500,000,000 delighted viewers on the Eastern Seaboard. 
  In the stillness of the three-room Ford apartment on the 76th floor of Building 257, the television set had been left on. Once more the air was filled with the cries and grunts and crashes of the fray, coming harmlessly now from the loudspeaker. 
  The battle also appeared on the screen of the television set in the police station, where the Fords and their captors watched with professional interest. 
  Underlining the announcer's words was the scratching of Gramps' pen, the one Willy had given him the night before. He had come in, a few minutes earlier, from the Idle Hour Tavern, which commanded a view of Building 257 from across the square of asphalt known as the Alden Village Green. He had called a cleaning woman to come straighten the place up, then had hired the best lawyer in town to get his descendants a conviction, a genius who had never gotten a client less than a year and a day. Gramps had then moved the day-bed before the television screen, so that he could watch from a reclining position. It was something he'd dreamed of doing for years.