An elderly academic with an anxious wife is enlivened by a trip to New York, where he has an unlikely series of encounters with the peculiar woman who sat beside him on the plane.

A woman grows obsessed with a single book from the time she is a young adult to her death in old age, as the book's meaning changes for her over time.

An insufferable white man offers advice to a well-read, unemployed Black man holding a sandwich-board sign on a street corner on race relations, physical appearance, and how to improve his handwriting and thereby advance himself in society.

A dying man revisits his lifelong hobby of fishing while confronting memories of his dead grandfather and the traumatic experiences of his childhood.

When a woman talks to a man in bed, their conversation reminds her of a short story she read earlier, and she wonders if she is stupid like the story's character.

A person driven mad by a voice in their head tries everything to stop it, but the voice is quite persistent.

A restless housewife gives up sleeping for seventeen days during which she regains the side of her that was lost since she got married. Her lack of sleep finally catches up to her with life-threatening consequences.