conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Mercury, Heaven, Southern with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Heaven of Mercury'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Heaven of Mercury
  He looked up. Lovie was standing next to his desk, looking through her bifocals at the pages he'd done.
  Jeepers, she'd said, one of her words. Rubbing his stubble, Finus considered Lovie, her fading Michigan twang now warbled into some kind of new American generic fostered by television and a misplaced embarrassment over accents in general, a psychological and self-imposed diaspora of the regional self.
  She'd come down, Lovie had, in tow with her retiring husband in '78. He was a salesman of nuts, the metal kind, nuts and bolts, a fisherman whose prize catches on their weekend trips to the coast she still displayed on her desk in the pastels of washed-out Polaroids. Why had they stopped here, in Mercury? Something to do with a cousin or elderly aunt, he thought he recalled. He favored one photo, with Lovie hoisting a huge red snapper, a little strip of flesh showing between her shorts and tied-up shirttail, her browned and more youthful feet beside a line of two-to-four-pounders laid out in the sand, invisible tiny fishteeth bared to the hostile air at her toes. He could have loved her, then. Anyone could've. His tender expression seemed to puzzle her, though.
  Finus just looked at her, smiling. She gave him her admonishing look and half-hobbled back over to her computer and began tappity-tapping the keys.
  Berthalyn ("Birdie") Isabella Wells Urquhart died Sunday at home in her bed of apparent heart failure. She was 88. She was born on the Gulf coast and grew up in Mercury, married Earl Urquhart when she was sixteen years old and raised two children who died before she could, having lived thirty-something years a widow.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He'd gotten older, fatter, balder, paler. No meaner-looking than before, really, still with his pale, pig eyes, thin lips, pointy head, foul mouth. Wandering from the guest room in the back in his suspender pants and T-shirt and house slippers, seemed stiffer, like age finally catching up to him all of a sudden, wouldn't be catching no girls alone in a shed no more, now. Couldn't bend his neck good, but would watch Creasie with those pale pig eyes when she had to pass him in the den or the living room, or bring a plate of food to the table when they ate.
  Just a little simmer inside her, began to grow, till she was so angry it was into a boil. Hatred for that old white man. Hatred for what he'd done to her. He looked like some big boil himself, full of ugly, full of poison. That was what made her think of Vish again. She sat out on her porch Sundays, when she didn't have to go over to the house, and watched them load him in the car to take him back to his empty home in Alabama. And finally one Saturday night before she went home to the cabin she said to Mr. Earl that if he was going into town for inventory the next morning she'd like to get a ride to the ravine.
  The old man rode along, sitting up front with Mr. Earl, Creasie rode in the back. She sat just behind the driver's seat, and though the old man couldn't turn his head to look back at her she could see his eyes cutting left trying to. Once he turned his shoulders and glanced at her, and she was looking at him. He scowled and turned back to face forward. Said not a word when Mr. Earl dropped her off, said he'd be back by around five that afternoon.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Earl dropped her off, said he'd be back by around five that afternoon.. Said not a word when Mr. He scowled and turned back to face forward. Once he turned his shoulders and glanced at her, and she was looking at him. She sat just behind the driver's seat, and though the old man couldn't turn his head to look back at her she could see his eyes cutting left trying to. Earl, Creasie rode in the back.
  The old man rode along, sitting up front with Mr. Earl that if he was going into town for inventory the next morning she'd like to get a ride to the ravine. And finally one Saturday night before she went home to the cabin she said to Mr. She sat out on her porch Sundays, when she didn't have to go over to the house, and watched them load him in the car to take him back to his empty home in Alabama. That was what made her think of Vish again. He looked like some big boil himself, full of ugly, full of poison. Hatred for what he'd done to her. Hatred for that old white man.
  Just a little simmer inside her, began to grow, till she was so angry it was into a boil. Couldn't bend his neck good, but would watch Creasie with those pale pig eyes when she had to pass him in the den or the living room, or bring a plate of food to the table when they ate. Wandering from the guest room in the back in his suspender pants and T-shirt and house slippers, seemed stiffer, like age finally catching up to him all of a sudden, wouldn't be catching no girls alone in a shed no more, now. No meaner-looking than before, really, still with his pale, pig eyes, thin lips, pointy head, foul mouth.He'd gotten older, fatter, balder, paler
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the scenes with Birdie after her death, I like to think a reader can see her spirit travel as either real or as a moment of compressed time and brain travel in the moments between life and death, the moments when the body has given up and some sort of residual energy still exists in the brain. A hugely imaginative time, I would think.
  How exactly do you describe the relationship between your two main characters, Finus Bates and Birdie Wells? If this is a kind of love story, why didn't you let them get together and live happily ever after?
  I think all too often people don't end up with the love of their lives. They end up with someone they love okay and they stick it out, or they don't. Finus and Birdie never get together, and to some extent it's a result of the bad timing, the odd luck of timing, that so often keeps people who seem right for each other apart. We've all had it happen: a love at first sight that tears our hearts out instantly, but we're committed to someone, or they are, and we don't act. Same with these two. It's a shame, when that sort of thing happens. But there usually are shameful consequences, sometimes ruinous, that follow if we do act.
  From Blue Angel: Being the Sacred and Profane Life and Times of Watson, Founded on Fact, by Michael Pettit. Copyright Michael Pettit. ("Blue Angel" and "Hurricane Watson" first appeared in the Indiana Review.)
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ). A hugely imaginative time, I would think.
  How exactly do you describe the relationship between your two main characters, Finus Bates and Birdie Wells? If this is a kind of love story, why didn't you let them get together and live happily ever after?
  I think all too often people don't end up with the love of their lives. They end up with someone they love okay and they stick it out, or they don't. Finus and Birdie never get together, and to some extent it's a result of the bad timing, the odd luck of timing, that so often keeps people who seem right for each other apart. We've all had it happen: a love at first sight that tears our hearts out instantly, but we're committed to someone, or they are, and we don't act. Same with these two. It's a shame, when that sort of thing happens. But there usually are shameful consequences, sometimes ruinous, that follow if we do act.
  From Blue Angel: Being the Sacred and Profane Life and Times of Watson, Founded on Fact, by Michael Pettit. Copyright Michael Pettit. ("Blue Angel" and "Hurricane Watson" first appeared in the Indiana Review.In the scenes with Birdie after her death, I like to think a reader can see her spirit travel as either real or as a moment of compressed time and brain travel in the moments between life and death, the moments when the body has given up and some sort of residual energy still exists in the brain.