conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about It'll, Reed, PreSchool-Grade with the genre: Children's Books, Growing Up & Facts of Life?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'A Day at the Beach'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled A Day at the Beach about Language, Writer, Minnesota with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Poetry?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is a 63-year-old, wiry/paunchy, white-haired, disaffected, formerly influential, prototypical/clean-shaven/Harvard-educated "Language Writer" (from Minnesota) become wildly innovative, "neo-Romantic"/"old-fashioned," hand-craft-writing/image-making, scruffy, corn, beans and squash-growing/blackberry-apple jam-making/set-in-his-ways type of opinionated, "archaic"-nuthead/vociferously "correct," "liberal"/verbal/"extemporaneous" person living in Bolinas, California.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book titled A Day at the Beach?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Day at the Beach: Set in a rundown Danish seaside resort, it depicts a day in the life of Bernie, a self-destructive alcoholic (played by Mark Burns), as he takes Winnie (Beatie Edney), a young girl with a leg brace, to the resort despite constant rain.\nThough Winnie calls Bernie "uncle," it is very likely he is her biological father.\nOver the course of the day, they encounter various people whom Bernie alternately berates and scams for alcohol, while Winnie is often left alone to fend for herself.\nPeter Sellers makes a cameo appearance as a gay shopkeeper who flirts with Bernie.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Day at the Beach: Set in a rundown Danish seaside resort, it depicts a day in the life of Bernie, a self-destructive alcoholic (played by Mark Burns), as he takes Winnie (Beatie Edney), a young girl with a leg brace, to the resort despite constant rain.\nThough Winnie calls Bernie "uncle," it is very likely he is her biological father.\nOver the course of the day, they encounter various people whom Bernie alternately berates and scams for alcohol, while Winnie is often left alone to fend for herself.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Language, Writer, Minnesota with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Poetry?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Day at the Beach (1938 film): The whole family is at the beach for an outing, and each is having their own little adventure.\nThe Captain fights the sun with his beach umbrella, in an attempt to nap.\nGrandpa tries to build a sand castle, but the waves keep wiping it out.\nMama, after trying to defend her picnic basket, tries dipping a cautious toe into the big bad ocean, eventually needing to be rescued by the Captain.\nAnd the kids, naturally, are cooking up mischief.\nTheir first target is that picnic basket, but their plan to use a pelican backfires when a lobster cuts the rope they were using.\nThen they set out to enjoy the water, but their "borrowing" the bottom of the safety rowboat has bad consequences later.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Day at the Beach
  Andrew shrugged. "I don't know. Hey, Geoffers, I don't care! Deep cover, who knows how you guys work? This isn't why I came, to dredge up these things."
  His companion spoke, from some deep well of contemplation: "Hey, Andrew? Guys like this [and here she made her own sweeping hand gesture, taking in pets, bric-a-brac, my wife, my sons, my furniture—I mean the furnishings of my life, our tangibles—as well as my countenance] weren't the kinda guys who ratted us out. The pricks who sold us out didn't wear neckties."
  He recapitulated his doubts about me, my preoccupation with spies and their plots, my friends in the Agency, my freedom from conventional responsibilities (in contrast, say, to his bondage?), my questions about his own wartime comings and goings.
  Andrew had no right to this. I owed him nothing now. Once, but not now. Now my debts were to others—Priscilla, my boys. I would justify myself no more to this old friend. I wanted to go to bed. Andrew and I grabbed each other's arms from reflex or learned habit—"Good to see you again, pal," I said; "Good to see you again, my friend," he said—and we parted, he downstairs to bed and I upstairs, where I would lie till sunup staring at my ceiling.
  I received a reply, friendly enough, ignoring what was between us. A postcard showing a war scene busy with soldiers, dive-bombers, trenches, red flags. The painting is hung in the Imperial War Museum and shows Lenin and Stalin looking down, as though—improbably—from heaven. It is captioned: "Under the banner of Lenin and Stalin onward to the west!"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: But Justin knew me, Nicholas did, Priscilla in and out. They'd float without me, and if I died they wouldn't have to live with the strangest story ever told, but with a story that could be told, and explained, and accommodated in a sane scheme. The terrifying part, seeing a standing man tip over, seeing their father fall, and quiver, and drool: they'd seen it, and come through it. That night I was kind of the same, but they were not. Whatever happened next would be better than that day at the beach.
  After all, here I am, down the road from my valve job. I don't remember the morning hours before they did what they did. Such amnesia, induced chemically or physiologically, is commonplace. I remember waking, and that my wife and boys were there, and that I couldn't talk past the tubes down my throat, and that I wanted to talk. I remember a nurse in intensive care who fed me chips of ice through a whole night, a chip at a time, like a kid feeding an abandoned bird.
  I got an easy ride. It was not more fun than a day at the beach—let me be frank—but it was supportable. No nurse addressed me in the first person plural. Morphine rubbed the edge off for a couple of days, and then I went for a week to industrial-strength Tylenol, and then household strength, and within a few weeks nothing. For quite some time Priscilla leapt to my croaking pleas for ice water, crossword-puzzle assistance, a little help changing channels, or plumping my pillows. Pretty soon it was "Get it yourself."
  Of the get-well cards, I liked best the generic: elephants in doctors' offices, and puppies in baskets. Trust Hallmark.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Now I heard alert care from the Coast Guard's end; they assured Nicholas they had no knowledge of any official vessel in our area. They asked our position, and when Nicholas gave it, they said they'd send a patrol out to us, and as soon as they said it, the lights astern winked off. Whoever was back there had either moved or shut off their lights.
  Who was it? Maybe a fishing boat, thinking it was following another fishing boat to a good haul? (Nicholas said they'd know by our masthead light we were a sailboat.) Okay, someone playing a game with us, for fun? (Nicholas said, "Does that make sense to you?") Maybe the DEA, after all? (Nicholas shrugged; why would they flee?) Then who? The Coast Guard never came. We moved on in anxious peace.
  So how was it that a few hours later we glanced at each other and shook our heads? We'd done hard time at the slots: it was like making five knots through the water against a five-knot current; at the end of several hours our little plastic buckets held about as many quarters as they had held when we began, and our arms ached. So we tried the wheel, but it was crowded; we had to hurl chips in the general direction of our birthdate numbers. After four hours we were eight dollars down, maybe up. And if up, how long at such rates to become high rollers? We looked at each other, nodded and made our way, dodging wheelchairs, into the mob of golden-aged sports.
  Twenty-four hours after leaving Harrah's, we were in Huntington, north of Cold Spring Harbor. As soon as we were snugged down, the sky opened, the wind howled, we lit a fire in the Tiny Tot fireplace, changed into clean clothes, cooked a pot of soup, put Lightnin' Hopkins in the tape deck, broke open a fresh deck of cards, played.
  It wasn't prudent to leave our mooring in such conditions. "In my considered opinion," I said, "weighing probability against experience, let's get out of here."