In this metafiction, the many lives of an unnamed man are scrutinized as he passes through millennia.

On a trip to Basel, a man falls in love with a middle-aged writer’s muse, creating a love triangle destined to fall apart under the weight of the old writer’s age.

An American man moves to Germany and falls in love with a married Norwegian woman in his language class. Their contrasting artistic tastes foretell a fundamental rift.

An overweight journalist navigates a strange friendship with a legendary writer and finds his life curiously entwined with one of the writer's students, a fiery young girl.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

Writing a foreword, a man reflects on his relationship to a writer and said writer's wife.

A poet attempts to sleep comfortably at a friend’s house without disturbing his hosts.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

In a future where technology has advanced to the point where humans can undergo "optimization" to rid themselves of emotions and increase their mental functions, one man decides to cling to his humanity in an effort to atone for his sins and appreciate the beauty of being human.