conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Horatio, Melody, Nora entitled The Time of Their Lives.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Time of Their Lives: The time is 1780, and Horatio Prim (Lou Costello) is a master tinker.\nHe travels to the Kings Point estate of Tom Danbury (Jess Barker) with a letter of commendation from Gen.\nGeorge Washington.\nHe plans to present this letter to Danbury, hoping it will persuade the wealthy man to let Horatio marry Nora O\'Leary (Anne Gillis), Danbury\'s housemaid.\nUnfortunately, Horatio has a romantic rival in Cuthbert Greenway (Bud Abbott), Danbury\'s butler, who is very fond of Nora and intends to prevent Horatio from presenting his letter, which Nora has taken for safekeeping.\nNora happens to overhear Danbury discussing his part in Benedict Arnold\'s plot; Danbury captures her, and hides the commendation letter in a secret compartment of the mantel clock.\nDanbury\'s fiancée, Melody Allen (Marjorie Reynolds), witnesses the situation and sets off on horseback to warn Washington\'s army.\nShe enlists Horatio\'s help, but the two of them are mistakenly shot by American troops who are arriving at the estate.\nTheir bodies are thrown down a well, and the soldiers ransack the house and burn it to the ground.\nThe souls of the two unfortunates are condemned to remain on the estate until the "crack of doom" unless evidence of their innocence can be proved to the world.\nFor the next 166 years the ghosts of Horatio and Melody roam the grounds of the estate.\nThen, in the 1940s, the estate is restored by Sheldon Gage (John Shelton).\nWhen the restoration is finished, complete with the "original" furniture (which was removed before the estate\'s fateful burning), Sheldon invites some friends to spend the night there.\nAccompanying him are his psychiatrist, dr Ralph Greenway (Bud Abbott), a descendant of Cuthbert, as well as Sheldon\'s fiancée, June Prescott (Lynn Baggett) and her Aunt Millie (Binnie Barnes).\nUpon arriving they are greeted by Emily (Gale Sondergaard), the maid who strongly believes that the estate is haunted.\nGhosts Horatio and Melody have some fun with this idea and try to scare the guests (playing the harpsichord, turning on the radio full volume), especially Greenway whom Horatio mistakes for Cuthbert and hits with a candlestick.\nThe newcomers hold a séance (during which dr Greenway is struck by Horatio for asking if he and Melody are "the two traitors" buried in the well) and learn the identities of the two ghosts, and of the letter which can free them (the spirit of Tom, channeling through Emily, relays the secret combination to open the clock and reveal the letter).\nThey search for the letter but soon learn that not all of the furniture is original, as the clock that holds the letter sits in a New York museum.\nGreenway, as a way of atoning for the cruelty of his predecessor, travels to the museum to retrieve the letter.\nHowever, unexpected events force him to steal it.\nHe arrives back at the estate with the state police in pursuit.\nHoratio uses the curse to his and Melody\'s advantage by riding in the police car that is supposed to take Greenway to jail; the car is thus prevented from leaving the estate, until the clock is opened.\nFinally the letter is found, and Melody and Horatio leave the estate to enter heaven, each called by a loved one (Melody by Tom & Horatio by Nora).\nUnfortunately for Horatio, who is met at heaven\'s gate by Nora, he must wait one more day, as Nora points to a sign that says "Closed for Washington\'s Birthday".
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Time of Their Lives
  In the course of hearing about Saxe Commins, I learned a lot about her husband, Ian Ballantine, and how she and Ian, two young arrivals from their native England, took Commins as their mentor.
  Saxe Commins died in 1958. Dorothy Commins remembered that William Faulkner had given her husband the first copy of the Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1949), which, Dorothy Commins wrote, "turned out to be a brief but eloquent plea for the values 'of love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.'"
  Klopfer, for example, stressed his anxiety about the future of the house. In one letter he asks plaintively, "Will Random House be any fun at all as a 'big business' instead of our own very personal venture?" A few days later he repeats this refrain in another letter: "Is it any fun anymore, or are you just developing a big audience like Doubleday or S & S? We've had so damned much fun out of the business that I hate to think I'm a stranger to this new phase of it."
  It was true. When Bennett's son Christopher was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, the nine-year-old boy said, "I want to be a publisher." Why is that? the man asked the boy. "Because all they do all day long is laugh and talk."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In 1934 he was working on a satire on the life and letters of a Bostonian. Feeling unsure of himself, almost panicking, he wrote McIntyre: "I, personally, have enjoyed writing it, and think it's amusing.... I certainly don't want to go ahead with the thing, however, if you don't think it holds any promise, and if it's not any good.... I know you will tell me frankly just how it strikes you, and its fate rests largely in your hands. Tell me quickly."
  In 1948, Cameron worked on the Henry A. Wallace presidential campaign. Wallace, vice president of the United States in Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, was a left-winger who felt he was a valid candidate to run against Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. To Senator Joe McCarthy, anyone who supported Wallace was suspect. When the Wisconsin senator started his rampage against Americans he scorned as communist sympathizers, or worse, Angus Cameron felt the lash.
  What caused the final rupture between Cameron and Little, Brown was his being told that as a member of the board, he would have to obtain approval of his outside activities, as did all board members. He was an editor, he said, and that required some freedom. He took his freedom and spent a decade effectively blacklisted.
  Arthur Thornhill, Jr., told me that in one of Cameron's exile years he had had lunch with Angus. "It was most enjoyable," Arthur said. "We talked about publishing at one point. I couldn't resist expressing regret over the breakup. Angus said, 'Forget it. For God's sake, it's ancient history.'"
  One day in 1960, Alfred Knopf was talking with his Canadian associate, Jack McClelland, the fiery publisher of McClelland & Stewart, a man always larger than life. "I'm looking for an editor," Knopf said. "I know one," Jack said. "Angus Cameron." So it was Knopf who delivered Angus from the wilderness, making him a senior editor at his grand house. Cameron's exile had ended.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Feeling unsure of himself, almost panicking, he wrote McIntyre: "I, personally, have enjoyed writing it, and think it's amusing.... I certainly don't want to go ahead with the thing, however, if you don't think it holds any promise, and if it's not any good.... I know you will tell me frankly just how it strikes you, and its fate rests largely in your hands. Tell me quickly."
  In 1948, Cameron worked on the Henry A. Wallace presidential campaign. Wallace, vice president of the United States in Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, was a left-winger who felt he was a valid candidate to run against Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. To Senator Joe McCarthy, anyone who supported Wallace was suspect. When the Wisconsin senator started his rampage against Americans he scorned as communist sympathizers, or worse, Angus Cameron felt the lash.
  What caused the final rupture between Cameron and Little, Brown was his being told that as a member of the board, he would have to obtain approval of his outside activities, as did all board members. He was an editor, he said, and that required some freedom. He took his freedom and spent a decade effectively blacklisted.
  Arthur Thornhill, Jr., told me that in one of Cameron's exile years he had had lunch with Angus. "It was most enjoyable," Arthur said. "We talked about publishing at one point. I couldn't resist expressing regret over the breakup. Angus said, 'Forget it. For God's sake, it's ancient history.'"
  One day in 1960, Alfred Knopf was talking with his Canadian associate, Jack McClelland, the fiery publisher of McClelland & Stewart, a man always larger than life. "I'm looking for an editor," Knopf said. "I know one," Jack said. "Angus Cameron." So it was Knopf who delivered Angus from the wilderness, making him a senior editor at his grand house. Cameron's exile had ended.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Hollander, John. Presentation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters of the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. Response by Robert Giroux, December 17, 2003.
  I would have been in deep soup often if I hadn't had Bruce Stark, my computer tutor, instantly answering my cries for help. And David A. Smith, involved in "Writer Services" at the New York Public Library, guided me in my research efforts to learn more about the early heads of American publishing companies.
  I can't say that any one of our grandchildren, ages three to twenty, actually did any work on the manuscript, but Ella, Zoe, Jonathan, Erin, Emma, Louis, and Russell, each in their own way, took me out of myself into the land of laughter. Cheers to all of them for constantly giving me perspective.
  None of this, of course, would have happened without the steadfast support of my wife. Rosa stood by me, as she always has, when I was high and when I was low, always making life more livable. Thank you, darling, for being you.