conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a plot for a book about Roger, Virginia, Lindahl entitled Puttering About in a Small Land?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Puttering About in a Small Land: In 1944, Virginia Watson and Roger Lindahl meet in Washington DC.\nThey marry after Roger divorces his first wife Teddy and abandons his daughter by her as well.\nTheir subsequent move to Los Angeles to work in a munitions factory proves extremely profitable.\nBut Roger spends the money far faster than it took them to earn it.\nBy 1953, Roger has opened a television sales and repair shop, while Virginia is trying enroll their 7-year-old son Gregg in an expensive boarding school in Ojai against Roger\'s wishes.\nLiz Bonner, another parent, persuades Roger to agree to Gregg\'s enrollment by offering to share the perilous and exhausting driving duties involved in transporting their children over the nearby mountains to and from Ojai.\nThere is a particular private exchange between Roger Lindahl and Marion Watson, Virginia\'s mother, that very graphically depicts Roger\'s highly immature, volatile and unpredictable nature.\nThe trigger for his outburst, ironically enough, is the realization that his hostile mother-in-law (as a favor only to her daughter) plans on providing substantial financial backing for his business.\n"Chic" or Charles Bonner, Liz\'s husband, wants to buy into Roger\'s shop as a partner, but Lindahl declines his offer and promptly begins an affair with a very accommodating Liz.\nVirginia finds out, though Chic remains unaware, and she hectors Roger into letting her assume legal ownership of the shop with Chic.\nUnfortunately, however, both marriages have been irreparably damaged.\nChic and Liz end up getting divorced.\nRoger and Virginia remain tenuously married, and a philandering Roger remains in contact with Liz through the private school.\nThe final chapter closes with ever-impulsive Roger dumping Gregg off at home, pilfering a carload of expensiveV.\nsets from the store and hightailing it to Chicago.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about \nBut.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Puttering About in a Small Land: In 1944, Virginia Watson and Roger Lindahl meet in Washington DC. \nThey marry after Roger divorces his first wife Teddy and abandons his daughter by her as well. \nTheir subsequent move to Los Angeles to work in a munitions factory proves extremely profitable. \nBut Roger spends the money far faster than it took them to earn it. \nBy 1953, Roger has opened a television sales and repair shop, while Virginia is trying enroll their 7-year-old son Gregg in an expensive boarding school in Ojai against Roger\'s wishes. \nLiz Bonner, another parent, persuades Roger to agree to Gregg\'s enrollment by offering to share the perilous and exhausting driving duties involved in transporting their children over the nearby mountains to and from Ojai. \nThere is a particular private exchange between Roger Lindahl and Marion Watson, Virginia\'s mother, that very graphically depicts Roger\'s highly immature, volatile and unpredictable nature. \nThe trigger for his outburst, ironically enough, is the realization that his hostile mother-in-law (as a favor only to her daughter) plans on providing substantial financial backing for his business. \nBut there is yet another financial interloper afoot. \n"Chic" or Charles Bonner, Liz\'s husband, wants to buy into Roger\'s shop as a partner, but Lindahl declines his offer and promptly begins an affair with a very accommodating Liz. \nVirginia finds out, though Chic remains unaware, and she hectors Roger into letting her assume legal ownership of the shop with Chic. \nUnfortunately, however, both marriages have been irreparably damaged. \nChic and Liz end up getting divorced. \nRoger and Virginia remain tenuously married, and a philandering Roger remains in contact with Liz through the private school. \nThe final chapter closes with ever-impulsive Roger dumping Gregg off at home, pilfering a carload of expensiveV. \nsets from the store and hightailing it to Chicago.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Puttering About in a Small Land
  The trip was new to her. She had lived in Los Angeles for almost nine years but she had never started up Highway 99, the fast inland highway that people took to San Francisco, five hundred miles to the north. As soon as the last Chevron stations and cafés and tract houses had fallen behind, the highway made directly for the mountains; without warning, she found herself in a tight bunch of cars and trucks, traveling at immense speed—her speedometer told her it was between seventy and ninety miles an hour—in a cleft that had been cut into the first row of hills. Ahead of her were the mountains themselves and she thought to herself that they were so desolate. Nobody lived there, certainly. The diesel trucks passed her on both sides; far up in the cab the driver of each eyed her with that dull, aloof disdain that so infuriated her. And then the trucks went around the turn ahead and left her behind.
  My Lord, she thought. Her hands, clutching the wheel, were white and damp. The racket of the trucks still beat in her ears, and she said to Gregg beside her, "Don't they go fast."
  Gregg said, "We don't have to go very far, do we?" His hands pressed together in his lap; the slow, nervous activity that his father gave way to under tension. On the boy's face a frown, a wrinkling of his brows, spread and consumed, got to his eyes and then his mouth, until he had been gathered up into a crimped little shape of concern. She let go of the wheel with her right hand to pat him reassuringly; his shoulder was as sharp and rigid as bone could be. Bone, she thought. Yes, he had hunched himself down into his bones, to peep out at passing things. Just a glance now and then, without any letting go.
  A sports car, like a black raisin, passed them and left them behind. "I loathe those things," Virginia said.
  She knew, from having studied the map, that to make the turn-off she had to be in the extreme left lane, three lanes over. No signs were visible anywhere, and she began to fear the worst. To her left the traffic was heavy, unbroken; the cars and trucks seemed to gain speed constantly, as if they had decided to race her. She put on the left-turn signal, but the cars paid no attention. Or perhaps they did not want to pay attention; she saw the faces of the drivers and they were without excitement, painted on, faultless.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: See? he thought. Look what can be done with the hiss. Look at the voices you can hear in the hum for no reason.
  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm, the world said to him. On all sides. Everywhere. Hiss and hum. Trying to reach him, speak out to him.
  On Sunday afternoon he put Gregg into the Oldsmobile and drove over to the Bonners'. In broad daylight their small tract house looked shabby; it needed paint around the windows, but at least the lawn had been cut. The red station wagon, parked out front, still had its coat of dust. On one fender somebody, probably the two boys, had traced letters in the dust, indistinct initials.
  As he closed the door of the Olds, he thought, I might even be able to read something in those initials traced on the car fender.
  His son appeared from around the side of the house. "They're in the backyard," he said. "They're out back."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Look what can be done with the hiss. Look at the voices you can hear in the hum for no reason.
  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm, the world said to him. On all sides. Everywhere. Hiss and hum. Trying to reach him, speak out to him.
  On Sunday afternoon he put Gregg into the Oldsmobile and drove over to the Bonners'. In broad daylight their small tract house looked shabby; it needed paint around the windows, but at least the lawn had been cut. The red station wagon, parked out front, still had its coat of dust. On one fender somebody, probably the two boys, had traced letters in the dust, indistinct initials.
  As he closed the door of the Olds, he thought, I might even be able to read something in those initials traced on the car fender.
  His son appeared from around the side of the house. "They're in the backyard," he said. "They're out back."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He made a left turn and drove onto the parking lot beside the store. Parking at the loading dock in the rear, hidden from sight, he stepped out.
  He locked the door behind him and passed by the counter, through the rear door, to the stock room where the inventory of television sets and stoves and refrigerators, in their packing cartons, were stored. Table model TV sets, he decided, would be easiest to sell, especially in the towns through which he would be driving. He unlocked the back door to the outside loading dock, and then he picked out the television sets he wanted—those that had been stored behind the others, out of sight—and carried them, one by one, to the car. He filled up the trunk compartment and the backseat. The sets were heavy, and by the time he had finished, his side hurt like hell.
  My goddamn side, he thought, gasping and trembling. But anyhow, the sets were in the car. At least seven hundred dollars worth, at dealer's cost. If he got less than one hundred dollars a set he would wind up with five hundred dollars.
  Going upstairs to the office, he pulled out the inventory cards that represented the sets he had taken. He stuck the cards in his pocket and returned to the main floor. Making sure that he had turned off all the lights, he locked the store up and got into the front seat of his car, behind the wheel.
  The car, when he drove out of the parking lot, seemed sluggish from the weight of the sets. It'll get lighter, he said to himself, by the time I get there.