conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Catastrophist about Daniel, Holocaust, Reed with the genre: Literature & Fiction.. Start with the sentence 'The narrator of this morbidly comic debut novel is Daniel Wellington, a 30-something art historian recounting the arc of his own self-destruction'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The narrator of this morbidly comic debut novel is Daniel Wellington, a 30-something art historian recounting the arc of his own self-destruction. Married, tenured, a rising star at Massachusetts's fictional Franklin College, Daniel falls apart piece by piece, beginning with the onset of "prepartum dread" when his wife "R." gets pregnant. He briefly recovers when she loses the baby, but the damage to their marriage is already done. The hapless Daniel proceeds to make a series of personal and professional misjudgments, including several unconsummated affairs. An expert on war memorials (he's at work on a manuscript titled <I>Art and Atrocity</I>), Daniel is appointed to the commission for a Berlin Holocaust Memorial, a position he jeopardizes by impulsively and falsely claiming to be the child of Holocaust survivors. Though the author covers familiar territory&mdash;the insularity of academia and the neurotic male in crisis&mdash;he does so with arch homage to Philip Roth. Even if the novel's landscape feels derivative, Daniel's maddening, pitiable voice is all his own. <I>(May 16)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Catastrophist
  Oh, talk about us, please, not the politics of this absurd place, anything but that. What is wrong with us cannot be recomposed so easily, so quickly. It will take more than an afternoon in bed. Talk about us, Inès, and what the future will be.
  She talks instead about Patrice. He is too trusting of the Belgians, apparently. Like the other delegates he was thrilled to be in Brussels. He thought he was being treated as an equal, meeting ministers, meeting the king; all the misunderstandings of the past had been cleared up. He and the others were so proud of having won independence, they didn't think about the details—and the details, she insists, are very bad.
  She starts to slip down in the bed, overtaken by tiredness. I kiss her gently on the lips. She raises a hand. I clasp it.
  She embraces me, pulling me down to the pillows, and with the last of her energy kisses me noisily and playfully—the Italian girl again.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We were joined by another American, a ruddy-faced little man with thinning fair hair and pale blue eyes to whom Timberlake referred as Dr. Joe from Paris. I had not seen Dr. Joe before. He did not seem to me to have much of the general practitioner's or surgeon's manner. If he had ever been a doctor—which I was inclined to doubt—I imagine he was struck off early in his career for something unsavory. When I asked how long he'd been in Leo he gave me a vague reply, and he was evasive about every other direct question I put to him, no matter how mundane. I got the impression Stipe was not pleased about my running into Dr. Joe, an impression confirmed some minutes later when he made a transparent excuse to take the doctor off. In their absence Timberlake rambled on. Lumumbavitch's allies and supporters, even the lowliest clerk with Lumumbavitch sympathies, would now be rounded up and thrown in jail. Too bad Gizenga had already escaped to Stanleyville, but they would get the others: Okito, Mulele, Mpolo, Smail, and—this took me by surprise—Auguste.
  I went to see Stipe the next morning to tackle him about the list of wanted Lumumbists. When talking about Okito, Mulele and the others, even when talking about Lumumba himself, Stipe's tone was neutral, but something hard and personal crept into his voice when he came to Auguste. According to Stipe, Auguste had spent a month in Czechoslovakia for cadre training and had recently risen to become chairman of the Jeunesse MNC, which he described as the terrorist wing of Lumumba's party. I was skeptical, but Stipe assured me it was all true. Then he asked a question that alarmed me.
  Yes, the Congo has been good for a laugh. I did not feel very much when Stipe broke the news. In fact I remember laughing in Stipe's face. Not because I didn't believe it to be true. I could see it all too clearly, in fact I had already suspected it. I knew the kind of man who excited Inès's interest. I had seen the little signs when Inès and I still lived together. But—out of deference to Inès, and partly for fear of being thought patronizing or churlish or, worse, jealous—I had never expressed my real opinion of Auguste. The truth was I had always seen him as a clown. The quoter of Erasmus, the lover of Socrates, Plato and John Stuart Mill, the member of the Association of the African Middle Classes and wearer of false spectacles and gaudy shirts. The man who was going to have a lawyer's office on Park Avenue with half a dozen pretty secretaries. How do you take a man like that seriously? How do you take a man like that as a lover? But Inès would. She would see in him other things.
  I was madly jealous—insanely, self-pityingly, violently so. The night Stipe gave me the news I went to Houthhoofd's house on Eugene Henry for one of my trysts with Madeleine. Madeleine had not fled, and she was contemptuous of those who had. She is a woman of aggressive instincts and these instincts she takes with her to the bedroom. Sex with her is never gentle. There have been times when I demurred but she always egged me on. "I want it like this," she would say to put my mind at ease, and she would whisper, "hurt me." She knew me. She knew me well. She sensed the hatred massing in me that night. She did not complain. And when it was over she smiled knowingly, triumphantly, as if at last I had entered a dark place into which she had been trying to tempt me for a long time.
  While she showered I lay on Houthhoofd's bed, thinking of Inès, thinking of Auguste. I knew what would happen to Auguste if Mobutu's men captured him or if Stipe found him. I had seen the results of their handiwork. During the fighting at Bakwanga, Baluba soldiers had sought revenge in the capital for the atrocities committed on their tribe by Lumumba's troops. One morning I came across a knot of people by the golf course. A Ghanaian officer with the U.N. forces, one of General Alexander's men, approached the small crowd. The men stood aside to reveal the body of a sleek young man lying face up on the street. I recognized the victim, had been on nodding terms with him. His name was Justin and he had been a low-level official in the MNC, an ardent supporter of the prime minister and a friend of Auguste's. Now he was dead—hacked and slashed and torn. I stopped for a closer look. The Ghanaian officer, squatting to inspect the corpse, flicked away a half-finished cigarette; it landed in the dark oil of blood by Justin's right leg. The bystanders spoke in loud voices, the officer wiped sweat from his eyes. The flies buzzed. The ash of the discarded cigarette glowed briefly in the pool of sticky crimson, then began its careless disintegration. I knew what would happen to Auguste.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about suffering.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We were joined by another American, a ruddy-faced little man with thinning fair hair and pale blue eyes to whom Timberlake referred as Dr. Joe from Paris. I had not seen Dr. Joe before. He did not seem to me to have much of the general practitioner's or surgeon's manner. If he had ever been a doctor—which I was inclined to doubt—I imagine he was struck off early in his career for something unsavory. When I asked how long he'd been in Leo he gave me a vague reply, and he was evasive about every other direct question I put to him, no matter how mundane. I got the impression Stipe was not pleased about my running into Dr. Joe, an impression confirmed some minutes later when he made a transparent excuse to take the doctor off. In their absence Timberlake rambled on. Lumumbavitch's allies and supporters, even the lowliest clerk with Lumumbavitch sympathies, would now be rounded up and thrown in jail. Too bad Gizenga had already escaped to Stanleyville, but they would get the others: Okito, Mulele, Mpolo, Smail, and—this took me by surprise—Auguste. 
  I went to see Stipe the next morning to tackle him about the list of wanted Lumumbists. When talking about Okito, Mulele and the others, even when talking about Lumumba himself, Stipe's tone was neutral, but something hard and personal crept into his voice when he came to Auguste. According to Stipe, Auguste had spent a month in Czechoslovakia for cadre training and had recently risen to become chairman of the Jeunesse MNC, which he described as the terrorist wing of Lumumba's party. I was skeptical, but Stipe assured me it was all true. Then he asked a question that alarmed me. 
  Yes, the Congo has been good for a laugh. I did not feel very much when Stipe broke the news. In fact I remember laughing in Stipe's face. Not because I didn't believe it to be true. I could see it all too clearly, in fact I had already suspected it. I knew the kind of man who excited Inès's interest. I had seen the little signs when Inès and I still lived together. But—out of deference to Inès, and partly for fear of being thought patronizing or churlish or, worse, jealous—I had never expressed my real opinion of Auguste. The truth was I had always seen him as a clown. The quoter of Erasmus, the lover of Socrates, Plato and John Stuart Mill, the member of the Association of the African Middle Classes and wearer of false spectacles and gaudy shirts. The man who was going to have a lawyer's office on Park Avenue with half a dozen pretty secretaries. How do you take a man like that seriously? How do you take a man like that as a lover? But Inès would. She would see in him other things. She would see in him suffering and struggle, heroism and resistance and self-sacrifice. 
  I was madly jealous—insanely, self-pityingly, violently so. The night Stipe gave me the news I went to Houthhoofd's house on Eugene Henry for one of my trysts with Madeleine. Madeleine had not fled, and she was contemptuous of those who had. She is a woman of aggressive instincts and these instincts she takes with her to the bedroom. Sex with her is never gentle. There have been times when I demurred but she always egged me on. "I want it like this," she would say to put my mind at ease, and she would whisper, "hurt me. " She knew me. She knew me well. She sensed the hatred massing in me that night. She did not complain. And when it was over she smiled knowingly, triumphantly, as if at last I had entered a dark place into which she had been trying to tempt me for a long time. 
  While she showered I lay on Houthhoofd's bed, thinking of Inès, thinking of Auguste. I knew what would happen to Auguste if Mobutu's men captured him or if Stipe found him. I had seen the results of their handiwork. During the fighting at Bakwanga, Baluba soldiers had sought revenge in the capital for the atrocities committed on their tribe by Lumumba's troops. One morning I came across a knot of people by the golf course. A Ghanaian officer with the U. N. forces, one of General Alexander's men, approached the small crowd. The men stood aside to reveal the body of a sleek young man lying face up on the street. I recognized the victim, had been on nodding terms with him. His name was Justin and he had been a low-level official in the MNC, an ardent supporter of the prime minister and a friend of Auguste's. Now he was dead—hacked and slashed and torn. I stopped for a closer look. The Ghanaian officer, squatting to inspect the corpse, flicked away a half-finished cigarette; it landed in the dark oil of blood by Justin's right leg. The bystanders spoke in loud voices, the officer wiped sweat from his eyes. The flies buzzed. The ash of the discarded cigarette glowed briefly in the pool of sticky crimson, then began its careless disintegration. I knew what would happen to Auguste.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the Gaucho, Gaspare, Maurizio and Mattia hail us excitedly. Have we been watching the television? The pictures from Derry and Belfast are incredible. Amazing things are happening. War has broken out. Alan is more interested than I. He hurries me when I'm eating, refuses dessert and coffee. He wants to go back to see the news.
  We settle in our chairs in front of the television. Brick-strewn streets, burned-out cars, gutted buildings, milk bottles filled with petrol, youths with scarves around the nose and mouth, rioters, refugees, police, soldiers. He is transfixed.
  I help him aboard with his luggage and we shake hands. Alan has his ambitions, he can sometimes be pompous, but he is a good man. I am sad now that he is going.
  I do not feel like working when I go back to the apartment. Instead I walk up Via Medail, over the bridge and along Via Modane, following my favorite route. I pass the ruined tower and the old stone farmstead with its garden of nettles and its caved-in roof and mossy gray timbers. I walk through the woods and up the rocky slopes where the scree underfoot has the tinkle of broken glass.
  There is no one on the mountain. I am here, safe in my anomie. There is only the screech of the kites, the barking deer and the quiet work of the meltwater. I think I must leave this place and not come back.