conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about California, Las, Vegas with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The King is Dead'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The King Is Dead about Elvis, Presley, Robert with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Arts & Literature?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: GO BEHIND THE LEGALLY CLOSED DOORS OF THE EMBALMING SUITE WITH FUNERAL DIRECTOR ROBERT KENDALL....THE LAST MAN ON EARTH TO SEE ELVIS PRESLEY...<P> He was a legend in his own time-a performer that held the generations captive. Renouned world-wide, the world was thrown into shock when it learned that his life had tragically ended more than 20 years ago on a hot August day.<P> While the world reeled in shock, and thousands of grieving fans mourned the loss of Elvis Presley, one man was thrust to the foreground of what would become this century's most infamous entertainment funeral.<P> Memphis Funeral Director Robert Kendall was appointed to handle the Presley funeral because he had worked with the Presley family on previous occassions--however, nothing could prepare him for the monstrous task that would lie ahead in coordinating a funeral of Elvis Presley proportions.<P> Author Robert the author's work is based on the daily journal that Funeral Director Kendall kept while preparing the Elvis burial. the author worked extensively with Robert Kendall before he passed away in 1994 to document every possible detail.<P> Read about how the world came to learn that Elvis Aaron Presley had died, and how thousands of mourners gathered in Memphis<P> Read about the media's involvement during the four days leading up to burial, and how Robert Kendall and his staff at the Memphis Funeral Home dealt with keeping the media in the dark.<P> Robert the author will take you behind the legally closed doors of the embalming suite to reveal details about Elvis' embalming.<P> Read how Memphis Funeral Home staff members had to smuggle the coffin of Elvis into the funeral home.<P> <P>the author's work will also recall the tender moments that Kendall spent with Lisa Marie and Priscilla, who were still dealing with the loss of Elvis.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <P> <P>the author's work will also recall the tender moments that Kendall spent with Lisa Marie and Priscilla, who were still dealing with the loss of Elvis..<P> Read how Memphis Funeral Home staff members had to smuggle the coffin of Elvis into the funeral home.<P> Robert the author will take you behind the legally closed doors of the embalming suite to reveal details about Elvis' embalming.<P> Read about how the world came to learn that Elvis Aaron Presley had died, and how thousands of mourners gathered in Memphis<P> Read about the media's involvement during the four days leading up to burial, and how Robert Kendall and his staff at the Memphis Funeral Home dealt with keeping the media in the dark. the author worked extensively with Robert Kendall before he passed away in 1994 to document every possible detail.<P> Author Robert the author's work is based on the daily journal that Funeral Director Kendall kept while preparing the Elvis burial.<P> Memphis Funeral Director Robert Kendall was appointed to handle the Presley funeral because he had worked with the Presley family on previous occassions--however, nothing could prepare him for the monstrous task that would lie ahead in coordinating a funeral of Elvis Presley proportions.<P> While the world reeled in shock, and thousands of grieving fans mourned the loss of Elvis Presley, one man was thrust to the foreground of what would become this century's most infamous entertainment funeral. Renouned world-wide, the world was thrown into shock when it learned that his life had tragically ended more than 20 years ago on a hot August day.<P> He was a legend in his own time-a performer that held the generations captive...THE LAST MAN ON EARTH TO SEE ELVIS PRESLEY....GO BEHIND THE LEGALLY CLOSED DOORS OF THE EMBALMING SUITE WITH FUNERAL DIRECTOR ROBERT KENDALL
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The King Is Dead about Walter, Nicole, King with the genre: Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A father's shame is explored by his son in The King Is Dead , the third novel by the author. Walter Selby, a decorated WW II veteran, becomes a speech writer and strategist for a prominent Tennessee politician; marries Nicole, a decade younger; and lives with all the trappings of the Southern upper-middle class, including two small children, Frank and Gail. A political debacle causes the fiercely moral Walter to resign, and he returns home early, only to find Nicole has been unfaithful. The second half of the novel follows Frank--who recalls little of his parents after his adoption--as a known, but declining, actor approached by a famous actress, Lenore, to star in her swan song.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The second half of the novel follows Frank--who recalls little of his parents after his adoption--as a known, but declining, actor approached by a famous actress, Lenore, to star in her swan song. Walter Selby, a decorated WW II veteran, becomes a speech writer and strategist for a prominent Tennessee politician; marries Nicole, a decade younger; and lives with all the trappings of the Southern upper-middle class, including two small children, Frank and Gail. A political debacle causes the fiercely moral Walter to resign, and he returns home early, only to find Nicole has been unfaithful.A father's shame is explored by his son in The King Is Dead , the third novel by the author.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The King Is Dead
  Ah, shit. Get me the name of an editor out there. I'm not going to say anything, but I want to know who I'm not saying it to.
  The editor's name was McAllen, then Walter sat down to write a few remarks for the Governor to speak in Smollet. History, promise, revenue. He considered calling Nicole when he was done, but anybody could have interrupted him—his secretary with some papers, the Governor on the line, officials and lobbyists, and others and others.
  It was four days further before he reached her; at last one evening she answered, and when she did he was so surprised that he didn't know what to say. There was a bar of silence. May I speak to Nicole Lattimore, please? he asked. This is she, said Nicole, her voice giving nothing away, not surprise, delight, or suspicion. It was a certain reserve that she'd learned since she came to Memphis, no more than a polite and professional way to answer the telephone.
  He reached up and touched the knot of his tie with his fingertips, to make sure it was straight. This is Walter Selby, he said softly. We met the other night, I guess it was about a week ago, at the ball game, in the parking lot afterward. I hope you don't mind my calling.
  Not at all, said Nicole, who just moments earlier had been measuring the century for solitude. She put her fingertips down on the edge of the table before her and listened while he made his way through an invitation, a date, dinner. The simple fact of his attention was gratifying to her, and so was his obvious nervousness. She hadn't had much in the way of romance since she came to town; the boys in the car had been friends, that's all; one of them worked in the advertising department at the station, the rest were his pals, and after a bit of jockeying they had settled for adopting her as a sort of mascot. It was just as well: she'd needed a few weeks to set up her little house, a few more to acclimate herself to her new job. The radio station was big and busy, and they needed her everywhere, all the time, answering phones, fending off salesmen, fetching reels of tape, cataloging 45s.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know three more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: One rises where the other falls, that's just the way it goes. Gail and Richard talked on the phone all through those months; he came east to visit her, and after six months he asked her to marry him. She called you that evening to tell you that she was going to say Yes; you were her mother and father for that moment. And you were happy for her, weren't you? You liked that man, Richard. You hadn't met him, but you liked what she'd said about him, and you blessed her and sent her to him. And sure enough, when they came to visit you a few weeks later, you found her fiancé to be quiet and polite, his hand tender on her, and you trusted that he could take a husband's part of caring for her, and leave you the brother's part. You were proud of her for having such a wise love, and you told her so. And she moved out to Kansas City, she married. She was hardly a woman yet; but they'd stayed married all those years after, and in time they had two boys named Richard Jr. and Kevin.
  Gather them around: sister, girlfriend, daughter. But, —Oh, Frank. You dangling nerve, you poor punch line, you dumb fuck. What went wrong? You and Helen started fighting about money, about schedules and times, about absurd things: the arrangement of the furniture in your apartment, the way she answered the telephone, about the traveling you did for work, about whether Amy's hair was auburn or brown; about the look a lovely woman in a dark blue business suit gave you when the three of you passed—as if you were alone and looking for someone like her. And you were hard, really hard to be with. It was as if everyone else knew something you didn't know, something huge about how to get along. You couldn't have it. Who cared? No one, Frank, no reason why they should. It was you, that's all. (And by the way, did you cheat on her, Frank? Helen? Did you?) So you left; you left Helen and Amy, and at the time you thought maybe that was best for everyone— or at least, that's what you managed to believe. Why should a little girl grow up amid such strife? Why should she hear such disappointment in her parents' voices? Amy's mind was as fine as confectioner's sugar; why muddle its sweetness with misery? So you gave them money and you left. Hell, you might as well have tried to keep them. Not that it was love, really, that had failed you in the first place. It was you who had failed, and the loss of love was what you paid. You had brought them to Los Angeles, but you couldn't bear the place anymore, so you left them there. Go. Remember birthdays, another school year done, remember Halloween and Christmas: call when you can, from wherever you are, and tell your daughter that she's your girl. Tell her you miss her as much as a ghost misses its flesh, misses life and all its alarms. Call her and say, Hello, sugar bear. It's your daddy.
  There's a girl in my school named Georgia. She's got an all white dog. Whiter even than the skin in under my arm. Where's Atlanta?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: One rises where the other falls, that's just the way it goes. Gail and Richard talked on the phone all through those months; he came east to visit her, and after six months he asked her to marry him. She called you that evening to tell you that she was going to say Yes; you were her mother and father for that moment. And you were happy for her, weren't you? You liked that man, Richard. You hadn't met him, but you liked what she'd said about him, and you blessed her and sent her to him. And sure enough, when they came to visit you a few weeks later, you found her fiancé to be quiet and polite, his hand tender on her, and you trusted that he could take a husband's part of caring for her, and leave you the brother's part. You were proud of her for having such a wise love, and you told her so. And she moved out to Kansas City, she married. She was hardly a woman yet; but they'd stayed married all those years after, and in time they had two boys named Richard Jr. and Kevin.
  Gather them around: sister, girlfriend, daughter. But, —Oh, Frank. You dangling nerve, you poor punch line, you dumb fuck. What went wrong? You and Helen started fighting about money, about schedules and times, about absurd things: the arrangement of the furniture in your apartment, the way she answered the telephone, about the traveling you did for work, about whether Amy's hair was auburn or brown; about the look a lovely woman in a dark blue business suit gave you when the three of you passed—as if you were alone and looking for someone like her. And you were hard, really hard to be with. It was as if everyone else knew something you didn't know, something huge about how to get along. You couldn't have it. Who cared? No one, Frank, no reason why they should. It was you, that's all. (And by the way, did you cheat on her, Frank? Helen? Did you?) So you left; you left Helen and Amy, and at the time you thought maybe that was best for everyone— or at least, that's what you managed to believe. Why should a little girl grow up amid such strife? Why should she hear such disappointment in her parents' voices? Amy's mind was as fine as confectioner's sugar; why muddle its sweetness with misery? So you gave them money and you left. Hell, you might as well have tried to keep them. Not that it was love, really, that had failed you in the first place. It was you who had failed, and the loss of love was what you paid. You had brought them to Los Angeles, but you couldn't bear the place anymore, so you left them there. Go. Remember birthdays, another school year done, remember Halloween and Christmas: call when you can, from wherever you are, and tell your daughter that she's your girl. Tell her you miss her as much as a ghost misses its flesh, misses life and all its alarms. Call her and say, Hello, sugar bear. It's your daddy.
  There's a girl in my school named Georgia. She's got an all white dog. Whiter even than the skin in under my arm.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Walter had left such things behind; he was dead and waiting for death to begin. Where does a man go, if he's done wrong? Time had ended for him; it had stopped, divided and stayed. It became an intoxicant, on which he was drunk, not just now but evermore. What law held? He had memories but he was mindless, and whatever he had once so briefly sensed—the smell of a living room, a woman's hand on his arm, his young son and infant daughter, a scrap of sky blue cloth— flashed and was gone. There was a long period of absolute silence, an absence of any motion, the world gone empty and therefore still all around him. He was cold. He was an atom, alone and without context, without movement, indivisible, and then he began to divide. A sensation started—not a sensation, but a recognition in reverse, as parts of his history began to peel off, one by one, flying away to join some distant source: an unwrapping, an unbinding, layer upon layer swiftly lifting, the corpus of his life all leaving, and beneath it there was nothing. Every thought of self had dissolved, his name expiring on the last remembered sound of its last remembered syllable. He was dead, and at last all-time had begun.
  Frank was on an airplane, winging over the continent. Beneath him ran the green-brown fields and silver rivers of the Plains. At the apex of his parabola over the nation, suspended high there over the earth, he felt an equal pull from every direction, a massing all around him, something like clouds would be, if clouds had content instead of rain: the people he knew, and those to come, all of the dead and dying, and the ones who wanted to die, and the ones who weren't yet born: the ones who wanted to save others, and the ones who lied their whole life long, the ones who could cry at the ends of movies but never at real life, the ones who just wanted to have a little fun, the ones who sold themselves for nothing, and the ones who couldn't stop doing whatever it was that gave them pleasure, until all the pleasure was gone; and the ones who listened but rarely spoke, the ones who loved the sound of people cheering, and the ones who always ended up trusting the wrong people, the ones who made everyone around them feel stronger, wiser, more beautiful; and the ones who never seemed to have enough money, and the ones who felt joy unexpectedly, and the ones who lost something dear to them and then found something yet more dear, and the ones who traveled through life touched by the divinity of devils, the desperate, the bad, and the ones who smiled at strangers because they, too, were strangers once, and might someday be strangers again. It was evening, and the sky was darkening, the sun burning the Western horizon orange, the stars emerging overhead.
  We say, Ah, but a life is short: a shout, a kiss, a bell. So it is, and the instant shutters, the life is done. What survives? Not Walter Selby, not himself, but some ecstatic mark of all he had known, which exploded outward, forever bursting, to be food for the stars, the burning ether, the fluid plenum, forever and without end, amen.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Walter had left such things behind; he was dead and waiting for death to begin. Where does a man go, if he's done wrong? Time had ended for him; it had stopped, divided and stayed. It became an intoxicant, on which he was drunk, not just now but evermore. What law held? He had memories but he was mindless, and whatever he had once so briefly sensed—the smell of a living room, a woman's hand on his arm, his young son and infant daughter, a scrap of sky blue cloth— flashed and was gone. There was a long period of absolute silence, an absence of any motion, the world gone empty and therefore still all around him. He was cold. He was an atom, alone and without context, without movement, indivisible, and then he began to divide. A sensation started—not a sensation, but a recognition in reverse, as parts of his history began to peel off, one by one, flying away to join some distant source: an unwrapping, an unbinding, layer upon layer swiftly lifting, the corpus of his life all leaving, and beneath it there was nothing. Every thought of self had dissolved, his name expiring on the last remembered sound of its last remembered syllable. He was dead, and at last all-time had begun.
  Frank was on an airplane, winging over the continent. Beneath him ran the green-brown fields and silver rivers of the Plains. At the apex of his parabola over the nation, suspended high there over the earth, he felt an equal pull from every direction, a massing all around him, something like clouds would be, if clouds had content instead of rain: the people he knew, and those to come, all of the dead and dying, and the ones who wanted to die, and the ones who weren't yet born: the ones who wanted to save others, and the ones who lied their whole life long, the ones who could cry at the ends of movies but never at real life, the ones who just wanted to have a little fun, the ones who sold themselves for nothing, and the ones who couldn't stop doing whatever it was that gave them pleasure, until all the pleasure was gone; and the ones who listened but rarely spoke, the ones who loved the sound of people cheering, and the ones who always ended up trusting the wrong people, the ones who made everyone around them feel stronger, wiser, more beautiful; and the ones who never seemed to have enough money, and the ones who felt joy unexpectedly, and the ones who lost something dear to them and then found something yet more dear, and the ones who traveled through life touched by the divinity of devils, the desperate, the bad, and the ones who smiled at strangers because they, too, were strangers once, and might someday be strangers again. It was evening, and the sky was darkening, the sun burning the Western horizon orange, the stars emerging overhead.
  We say, Ah, but a life is short: a shout, a kiss, a bell. So it is, and the instant shutters, the life is done.