conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Warriors about WWII, Korea with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Literature & Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The author treats us to yet another comedy-drama about his life and that of his relatives and friends who went to fight in WWII and Korea.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book titled The Warriors about WWII, Korea with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Literature & Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Warriors (Doctor Who audio): As Kaymee discovers the truth about the plague, Galanar and Elaria discover the truth about themselves.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Warriors
  The Fertigs' marriage begins to fall apart. Fertig tries to decide who is responsible for his son's death. Gradually it dawns on him that while there were "whos," the three people, a petty-minded intake worker, a nurse, and a resident, there is a "not-who"; he is in the presence of a larger system of mutually shared responsibility (or, rather, guilt). He wants revenge. But how, after all, does any individual kill a system? He selects exemplary victims... seven people, the three who were in the emergency room and four directors of the hospital and decides to kill them and, because his life has fallen apart, he wants to be caught and to have his day in court, perhaps envisioning making a stirring speech..
  Further researching the project, I went into several hospitals and walked through them various times during daylight hours and at night to see if I could have access to the personnel so that I, like Fertig, might, if I wanted to, kill them. I found it was quite easy.
  But Fertig, naive, becomes a victim of his own illusions. He finds that the criminal justice system, as I found it really to be, and given the complex interaction of the media, is bizarre, surreal. He becomes the victim of half-senile and corrupt judges, ambitious journalists and lawyers, and mutually contradicting psychiatrists with certain stereotypical expectations.
  Of course Fertig could not be allowed to have his day in court. By definition, within the context of our society, he had to be a rational, malevolent criminal, possibly a left-wing crazy, or a seriously disturbed individual. If there was reason behind his motivation, it might be if not sympathized with, at least understood. But even to understand Fertig's motivation was to point at the inhuman in society: his complaints about the system that killed his son might fall on receptive ears. Others might take the law into their own hands and do likewise. Juries might choose not to convict. He must be considered psychotic.
  Now I have explained this process rationally. What I have not talked about was the way the work consumed me; I worked night and day. There were periods of leaps of insight and periods of slow growth of understanding. I was gradually transformed as I wrote. My view of the world changed yet again.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I chose to tell the major part of the story from the perspective of, first, a small, insignificant gang and then from the point of view of one of its members, Hinton (I had already invented him in a short story). This gang would make the journey up from the projects in Coney Island to the meeting ground in the Bronx (Van Courtlandt Park, or call it Babylon) and then back. The representatives, after the whole venture had been broken up by the police, would seek refuge in Woodlawn Cemetery (where, incidentally, Melville was buried) and then they would have to, like the Greek ten thousand, fight their way through hostile territories ruled by other gangs to their home grounds. The escape from the cemetery is of course a kind of resurrectionary move. Like the Greeks, they would finally reach the "Black Sea," only, in this case, it was the Atlantic Ocean off Coney Island. Thus also the sea, considering the hero's last position, curled up with his thumb in his mouth, to be a "return" to the womb, having gained much knowledge, and in the light shining on the sea, he has, indeed, returned to a grave again.
  And yet, since I wanted to fold in the mythic and ritual, to make this journey a rite of passage, I thought in terms of similar (anthropological and literary) rite-of-passage journeys. Yet, whatever I thought about rhetorical devices, parallels, literary references, I was determined to bury them in such a way that they would work subliminally on the minds of the literate reader. If you missed the references, then you had, I hoped, a good story.
  Gangs (of the time I was writing about) were quite different than the gangs of today. For one thing, automobiles were not available to them. For another, there were very few guns around. The gangs were neighborhood-bound and quite ignorant of the city outside their own territories; indeed, they were frightened of strange turf. Whatever contacts, alliances, conflicts, and permissions to travel through alien lands belonging to other gangs took place were conducted through their leaders. They practiced diplomacy from gang to gang, albeit in crude language, but, formally, just like the diplomacy conducted by nations. It's fascinating to see these social forms spring up among the "ignorant" "lower" social strata; no readers of Kissinger they... and yet they had the same sophisticated understanding.
  Economically the gangs of those times were totally marginal. They had just about no entreé into organized crime. The very need to form gangs was a product of their irrelevance. This situation has changed enormously, fueled by the drug trade, which brings neighborhood localities into contact with the global economy, requiring new, sophisticated modes of understanding and operation. And, as with all trade conflicts over control of markets from time immemorial, disputes require heavy weaponry, which is easily available.
  In planning, I employed a corporate management tool called PERT... Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Assembling a business enterprise or a story requires the same kind of planning. I made a grid. On the top of the grid, in each box, I placed the time plus each step of the plot. On the side of the grid I placed various things, which would serve as running, extended metaphors. I followed the progress of these things through the long night... such as the gradual disintegration of a shoe, the change in the weather, and so forth. These things also mirrored the psychic state of the characters as they were on their "long march" from the Bronx to Coney Island.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I chose to tell the major part of the story from the perspective of, first, a small, insignificant gang and then from the point of view of one of its members, Hinton (I had already invented him in a short story). This gang would make the journey up from the projects in Coney Island to the meeting ground in the Bronx (Van Courtlandt Park, or call it Babylon) and then back. The representatives, after the whole venture had been broken up by the police, would seek refuge in Woodlawn Cemetery (where, incidentally, Melville was buried) and then they would have to, like the Greek ten thousand, fight their way through hostile territories ruled by other gangs to their home grounds. The escape from the cemetery is of course a kind of resurrectionary move. Like the Greeks, they would finally reach the "Black Sea," only, in this case, it was the Atlantic Ocean off Coney Island. Thus also the sea, considering the hero's last position, curled up with his thumb in his mouth, to be a "return" to the womb, having gained much knowledge, and in the light shining on the sea, he has, indeed, returned to a grave again.
  And yet, since I wanted to fold in the mythic and ritual, to make this journey a rite of passage, I thought in terms of similar (anthropological and literary) rite-of-passage journeys. Yet, whatever I thought about rhetorical devices, parallels, literary references, I was determined to bury them in such a way that they would work subliminally on the minds of the literate reader. If you missed the references, then you had, I hoped, a good story.
  Gangs (of the time I was writing about) were quite different than the gangs of today. For one thing, automobiles were not available to them. For another, there were very few guns around. The gangs were neighborhood-bound and quite ignorant of the city outside their own territories; indeed, they were frightened of strange turf. Whatever contacts, alliances, conflicts, and permissions to travel through alien lands belonging to other gangs took place were conducted through their leaders. They practiced diplomacy from gang to gang, albeit in crude language, but, formally, just like the diplomacy conducted by nations. It's fascinating to see these social forms spring up among the "ignorant" "lower" social strata; no readers of Kissinger they... and yet they had the same sophisticated understanding.
  Economically the gangs of those times were totally marginal. They had just about no entreé into organized crime. The very need to form gangs was a product of their irrelevance. This situation has changed enormously, fueled by the drug trade, which brings neighborhood localities into contact with the global economy, requiring new, sophisticated modes of understanding and operation. And, as with all trade conflicts over control of markets from time immemorial, disputes require heavy weaponry, which is easily available.
  In planning, I employed a corporate management tool called PERT... Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Assembling a business enterprise or a story requires the same kind of planning. I made a grid. On the top of the grid, in each box, I placed the time plus each step of the plot. On the side of the grid I placed various things, which would serve as running, extended metaphors. I followed the progress of these things through the long night... such as the gradual disintegration of a shoe, the change in the weather, and so forth.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But outside the professional-intellectual level, the movie had already captured the imaginations of the kids, including many gang members, in a different way. Many young men, now in their thirties and forties, have told me that seeing the movie (again and again and again) had been a defining moment in their young lives.
  As far as the media was concerned, the events led it to create a climate of alarm. There were reports that various gangs had begun to copy the style of the Warriors. Graffiti bearing the name of Warriors began to appear (some of the graffiti had of course been spray-painted by the filmmakers). Some theaters refused to show the movie as well as the other gang movies when they were released.
  It was clear that nothing could be cut from the movie; it was already too tight to take out anything. It was decided to drop all advertising. It seemed as though the movie had disappeared from the screen, although it was still showing all over the country. Of course the audience numbers dropped.