conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled The Map and the Territory about Jed, Starred, Review with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: *Starred Review* the author (The Possibility of an Island, 2006) has been outraging and galvanizing readers with his meticulously composed, cold-souled novels for the last 12 years. In his latest, winner of Frances Prix Goncourt, he addresses the vatic nature of creativity and our ever-expanding definition of art while telling the story of an emotionally shut-down artist, Jed Martin, and a reclusive writer named (what else?) the author. Jeds inexplicably powerful photographs of old Michelin maps bring him fame, wealth, and love. Brooding and insular, he next embarks on a series of paintings that pay homage to people and their work as the Industrial Revolution gives way to the digital revolution. Jed tracks down despondent and disheveled Michel to ask him to write catalog copy for an upcoming exhibition, thereby initiating a melancholy bond. Up to this point, the authors novel is supremely ensnaring in its acute and arch dissection of human endeavors elevated and crass, the latter including the tyranny of trends and the so-called free market. Suddenly, things take a macabre turn as were plunged into an appalling crime scene, which gradually morphs into a disquieting paean to natures indomitability. the authors bewitching journey on the river of art to the cave of death and decay is a tale of eviscerating insight, caustic humor, troubling beauty, and haunting provocation. --Donna Seaman
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: *Starred Review* the author (The Possibility of an Island, 2006) has been outraging and galvanizing readers with his meticulously composed, cold-souled novels for the last 12 years. In his latest, winner of Frances Prix Goncourt, he addresses the vatic nature of creativity and our ever-expanding definition of art while telling the story of an emotionally shut-down artist, Jed Martin, and a reclusive writer named (what else?) the author. Jeds inexplicably powerful photographs of old Michelin maps bring him fame, wealth, and love. Brooding and insular, he next embarks on a series of paintings that pay homage to people and their work as the Industrial Revolution gives way to the digital revolution. Jed tracks down despondent and disheveled Michel to ask him to write catalog copy for an upcoming exhibition, thereby initiating a melancholy bond. Up to this point, the authors novel is supremely ensnaring in its acute and arch dissection of human endeavors elevated and crass, the latter including the tyranny of trends and the so-called free market. Suddenly, things take a macabre turn as were plunged into an appalling crime scene, which gradually morphs into a disquieting paean to natures indomitability. the authors bewitching journey on the river of art to the cave of death and decay is a tale of eviscerating insight, caustic humor, troubling beauty, and haunting provocation.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Map and the Territory
  Jean-Pierre Pernaut stopped talking and drank some Beaumes-de-Venise; Olga looked a few degrees away and suddenly saw Jed, standing there in the crowd. A few seconds can be enough to decide a life, or at least to reveal its main direction. She put her hand lightly on the host's forearm, giving him a word of apology, and in a few bounds she was in front of Jed and kissing him on the mouth. Then she stepped back, taking him by the hands. For a few seconds they remained silent.
  Avuncular in his Arthur van Aschendonk tails, Jean-Pierre Pernaut saw them turn toward him. His unguarded expression in that moment suggested that he understood life and even felt at ease with it. Olga made the introductions.
  Quickly crossing the last room, accidentally brushing the arm of Patrick Le Lay (who had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy shares in the channel), he led them down a wide corridor with high, vaulted walls made of thick limestone. More than a townhouse, Jean-Pierre Pernaut's residence reminded you of a Romanesque abbey, with its corridors and crypts. They stopped in front of a thick door padded with brown leather. "My office," said the host.
  Without hesitation, Jean-Pierre Pernaut walked over to his former boss and stood straight in front of him. "You've drunk too much, Patrick," he said calmly; his muscles were tense under the fabric of the tails, his face hardened as if he was preparing for a fight. "Okay, okay..." said Le Lay, obsequiously indicating that he'd calmed down. "Okay, okay..." At that moment, a resonant tenor voice, of incredible power, rose up from the second room. Other voices, baritone and then bass, took up the same theme, without words, in a round. Many guests turned in this direction, recognizing a famous Corsican polyphony group. Twelve men of all ages, wearing black trousers, smocks, and berets, gave a vocal performance that lasted a little more than two minutes: it was at the limit of what one could call music, more a war cry, of surprising savagery. Then they suddenly stopped. Spreading his arms slightly, Jean-Pierre Pernaut went to meet the crowd, waited for silence to fall, then said in a loud voice: "Happy New Year to you all!" A volley of champagne corks popped. The host then went over to the three men in gray suits and shook hands with each of them. "They belong to the Michelin board of directors..." Olga whispered to Jed before approaching the group. "Financially, TF1, next to Michelin, counts for nothing. And it seems that Bouygues is sick of mopping up their losses," she had the time to add before Jean-Pierre Pernaut introduced her to the three men. "I was slightly expecting Patrick to make a scene," he was saying to the directors. "He took my departure very badly."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He turned to his son, and looked him straight in the eyes. "It seemed better for me to warn you, and I couldn't see myself speaking to you about it on the phone. I've contacted an organization in Switzerland. I've decided to be euthanized."
  Jed didn't react immediately, leaving his father time to develop his argument, which boiled down to the fact that he was sick of being alive.
  Oh, yes, they gave him morphine, as much as he wanted obviously—they preferred the residents to be quiet—but was it a life, to be constantly under the influence of morphine?
  In truth, Jed thought yes, that it was almost even an enviable life, without worries, responsibilities, desires, or fears, close to the life of plants, where you could enjoy the moderate caress of the sun and the breeze. However, he suspected that his father would have difficulty sharing this point of view. He was a former chief executive, an active man. Those people often have problems with drugs, he said to himself.
  Something else, however, was left for him to live through, and a few days later a guy called Ferber phoned him. His voice was gentle and pleasant, not at all what he imagined from a policeman. He informed him that it would not be him but his superior, Inspector Jasselin, who would receive him at the quai des Orfèvres.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Jed's health was declining: he could no longer eat anything other than dairy products and sugary foods, and he began to suspect that he would, like his father, die of cancer of the digestive tract. Some examinations done at the hospital in Limoges confirmed this prognosis, but he refused to be treated, to begin radiation therapy or other heavy treatments, and just took comfort medication—that relieved his pains, which were particularly acute in the evening—and massive doses of sleeping pills. He made his last will and testament, leaving his fortune to various animal-protection associations.
  At around the same time, he began filming photographs of all the people he had known, from Geneviève to Olga, including Franz, Michel Houellebecq, his father, some other people too, in fact all those he had photographs of. He fixed them to a neutral gray waterproof canvas, and shot them just in front of his home, this time letting natural decay take its course. Subjected to the alternations of rain and sunlight, the photographs crinkled, rotted in places, then decomposed into fragments, and were totally destroyed in the space of a few weeks. More curiously, he acquired toy figurines, schematic representations of human beings, and subjected them to the same process. The figurines were more resilient, and in order to accelerate their decomposition, he again had to use his carboys of acid. He now fed exclusively on liquids, and every evening a nurse came to give him an injection of morphine. But in the morning he felt better, and until his last day he could work for at least two or three hours.
  The work that occupied the last years of Jed Martin's life can thus be seen—and this is the first interpretation that springs to mind—as a nostalgic meditation on the end of the Industrial Age in Europe, and, more generally, on the perishable and transitory nature of any human industry. This interpretation is, however, inadequate when one tries to make sense of the unease that grips us on seeing those pathetic Playmobil-type little figurines, lost in the middle of an abstract and immense futurist city, a city which itself crumbles and falls apart, then seems gradually to be scattered across the immense vegetation extending to infinity. That feeling of desolation, too, that takes hold of us as the portraits of the human beings who had accompanied Jed Martin through his earthly life fall apart under the impact of bad weather, then decompose and disappear, seeming in the last videos to make themselves the symbols of the generalized annihilation of the human species. They sink and seem for an instant to put up a struggle, before being suffocated by the superimposed layers of plants. Then everything becomes calm. There remains only the grass swaying in the wind. The triumph of vegetation is total.
  This time, I therefore have the pleasure of thanking Teresa Cremisi, who took all the necessary steps, as well as the principal private secretary Henry Moreau and the police commander Pierre Dieppois, who gave me a kind welcome at the quai des Orfèvres, and provided very useful information on their difficult profession.
  It goes without saying that I felt free to modify the facts, and that the opinions expressed are exclusively those of the characters; in short, this is a work of fiction.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Some examinations done at the hospital in Limoges confirmed this prognosis, but he refused to be treated, to begin radiation therapy or other heavy treatments, and just took comfort medication—that relieved his pains, which were particularly acute in the evening—and massive doses of sleeping pills. He made his last will and testament, leaving his fortune to various animal-protection associations.
  At around the same time, he began filming photographs of all the people he had known, from Geneviève to Olga, including Franz, Michel Houellebecq, his father, some other people too, in fact all those he had photographs of. He fixed them to a neutral gray waterproof canvas, and shot them just in front of his home, this time letting natural decay take its course. Subjected to the alternations of rain and sunlight, the photographs crinkled, rotted in places, then decomposed into fragments, and were totally destroyed in the space of a few weeks. More curiously, he acquired toy figurines, schematic representations of human beings, and subjected them to the same process. The figurines were more resilient, and in order to accelerate their decomposition, he again had to use his carboys of acid. He now fed exclusively on liquids, and every evening a nurse came to give him an injection of morphine. But in the morning he felt better, and until his last day he could work for at least two or three hours.
  The work that occupied the last years of Jed Martin's life can thus be seen—and this is the first interpretation that springs to mind—as a nostalgic meditation on the end of the Industrial Age in Europe, and, more generally, on the perishable and transitory nature of any human industry. This interpretation is, however, inadequate when one tries to make sense of the unease that grips us on seeing those pathetic Playmobil-type little figurines, lost in the middle of an abstract and immense futurist city, a city which itself crumbles and falls apart, then seems gradually to be scattered across the immense vegetation extending to infinity. That feeling of desolation, too, that takes hold of us as the portraits of the human beings who had accompanied Jed Martin through his earthly life fall apart under the impact of bad weather, then decompose and disappear, seeming in the last videos to make themselves the symbols of the generalized annihilation of the human species. They sink and seem for an instant to put up a struggle, before being suffocated by the superimposed layers of plants. Then everything becomes calm. There remains only the grass swaying in the wind. The triumph of vegetation is total.
  This time, I therefore have the pleasure of thanking Teresa Cremisi, who took all the necessary steps, as well as the principal private secretary Henry Moreau and the police commander Pierre Dieppois, who gave me a kind welcome at the quai des Orfèvres, and provided very useful information on their difficult profession.
  It goes without saying that I felt free to modify the facts, and that the opinions expressed are exclusively those of the characters; in short, this is a work of fiction.