conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about United, States, Samuel with the genre: New, Used & Rental Textbooks, Humanities?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first paragraph for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
  I sought him out, therefore. As I knew I would, I found him at five o'clock in the afternoon of a February day at one of his favourite ports of call, a tavern called The Crank and Schizoid, close by the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in the city of Toronto. Marchbanks likes to go there to eavesdrop on the professional gossip of the psychiatrists who frequent the place when their work-day (nine fifty-minute hours) is over. "Nothing leaks like a full shrink," Marchbanks has often said, and he picks up a lot of information in the pub about persons highly placed in government and business. There he was, in a dark corner, and before him on the table was a glass of his favourite tipple, a lukewarm gin-and-acid-rain.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Consider: in the Bible version Samson carelessly allowed twenty years to pass between his strangling of the lion and his adventure with Delilah. Such a lapse of time would have made him at least forty when the film ended—practically an old man by Hollywood reckoning. In a new translation this period of time could be tactfully left out. And it is recorded also that Samson had an adventure with a lady about whose virtue the Scriptures, in their coarse way, leave no doubt. In fact, it appears that Samson was not A Nice Clean American Boy but a rowdy old delinquent. This blot on his character could be glossed over in a new translation, as it was in the movie. And there is also the flat statement that Samson set fire to the tails of a lot of foxes; the S.P.C.A. would certainly not have tolerated that if it had been shown in the film.
  What the U.S.A. needs is a translation of the Bible all its own. It is now the dominant Western power, and should avail itself of the traditional privilege of a dominant power to impose its religion, or its version of an existing religion, upon the rest of the world. There is much in the Bible that is undemocratic and un-American. Indeed, I put it to you that the implication that the Supreme Being was not democratically elected to that position casts grave doubts upon the moral magnitude and spiritual significance of the Constitution. It is time to abandon the King James Version, with its seventeenth-century cast of thought and its strongly English slant, and to adopt something more in keeping with the Gospel according to Washington.
  What a base passion our age has for pretending that whatever is good is necessarily "modern." What a depraved appetite we have for mere contemporaneity! How old Samuel Johnson would have snorted at the idea that a classic—particularly a classic about himself—was in some way ennobled by being declared the contemporary of the Wettums Doll, sliced, wrapped bread, and the singing telegram! This is an age without humility.
  I am enchanted by the thought that you wish to do a full-scale Ph.D. thesis on my work. Of course I recognize your name immediately as that of the writer of essays already famous in the very littlest magazines:
  These splendid studies are daily reading in the Marchbanks household. I cannot wait to see what you will make of me.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In my early days I was invited by learned men to believe in the Triple Goddess, and a very good goddess she was. But when I was Christianized I was commanded to believe in a Trinity that was also a Unity, and a goddess who looked and behaved remarkably like my Triple Goddess, though I was assured she was somebody much more up-to-date and important. Then a man named Calvin demanded that I believe in Strength through Misery, and I did till a man named Wesley told me to believe in Personal Revelation and Ecstasy, and I did. During a brief spell in New England Emerson told me to believe in a Unity that had nothing to do with a Trinity, and was itself of doubtful existence, and I did. But then I was told by people calling themselves scientists to believe in Phrenology, Animal Magnetism, the Germ Theory, Psycho-Analysis, Sociology, Relativity, Atomic Energy, Space Travel, God-is-Dead, Quasars, Spiral Time and so many new faiths that I could not keep up with them, though I tried.
  Because as a Celt, you see, I am at once credulous of everything and sceptical of everything, and not a whole-hogger, who rushes from the Mother of God to Mary Baker Eddy, and from her to LSD, expecting some revelation that will settle everything. I don't want everything settled. I enjoy the mess.
  Not out of jail yet, Marchbanks. This awful late Spring. No want freedom. Want jail. So when day come for let me out I kick Turkey awful hard when he inspecting beds. What for you kick me, he say. Seat your pants awful shiny, I say. Dazzle my eyes. Make me think sunrise. I kick for do Sun Dance. Ha, ha. Joke Marchbanks. Turkey get red neck. O, he say, funny fellow huh. Yes, I say. So he say I get no time off for good conduct and have to stay in jail another week. This good, Marchbanks. Maybe Spring in one more week. This awful snow remind me poem my grandmother Old Nokomis teach me.
  Can I deny it? Not with a clear conscience. Marchbanks and I have struggled through a literary life like two men in a three-legged race. And as anyone who has ever run a three-legged race knows, the only way to manage is to keep thrusting the two linked legs forward, leaving the two single legs to catch up as best they may.
  So, hand in hand, me bowing gracefully with my free hand on my heart, and Marchbanks exhorting and haranguing to the last, we bid you, our Reader
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In my early days I was invited by learned men to believe in the Triple Goddess, and a very good goddess she was. But when I was Christianized I was commanded to believe in a Trinity that was also a Unity, and a goddess who looked and behaved remarkably like my Triple Goddess, though I was assured she was somebody much more up-to-date and important. Then a man named Calvin demanded that I believe in Strength through Misery, and I did till a man named Wesley told me to believe in Personal Revelation and Ecstasy, and I did. During a brief spell in New England Emerson told me to believe in a Unity that had nothing to do with a Trinity, and was itself of doubtful existence, and I did. But then I was told by people calling themselves scientists to believe in Phrenology, Animal Magnetism, the Germ Theory, Psycho-Analysis, Sociology, Relativity, Atomic Energy, Space Travel, God-is-Dead, Quasars, Spiral Time and so many new faiths that I could not keep up with them, though I tried.
  Because as a Celt, you see, I am at once credulous of everything and sceptical of everything, and not a whole-hogger, who rushes from the Mother of God to Mary Baker Eddy, and from her to LSD, expecting some revelation that will settle everything. I don't want everything settled. I enjoy the mess.
  Not out of jail yet, Marchbanks. This awful late Spring. No want freedom. Want jail. So when day come for let me out I kick Turkey awful hard when he inspecting beds. What for you kick me, he say. Seat your pants awful shiny, I say. Dazzle my eyes. Make me think sunrise. I kick for do Sun Dance. Ha, ha. Joke Marchbanks. Turkey get red neck. O, he say, funny fellow huh. Yes, I say. So he say I get no time off for good conduct and have to stay in jail another week. This good, Marchbanks. Maybe Spring in one more week. This awful snow remind me poem my grandmother Old Nokomis teach me.
  Can I deny it? Not with a clear conscience. Marchbanks and I have struggled through a literary life like two men in a three-legged race. And as anyone who has ever run a three-legged race knows, the only way to manage is to keep thrusting the two linked legs forward, leaving the two single legs to catch up as best they may.