In the depths of his mind, a writer tries to uncover the autonomous, nefarious motivations of his own characters.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

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

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.

In his new job as an English professor, Tarzan finds himself annoyed by his students, hounded by his department chair, and alienated by the world around him, with solace only from his girlfriend Jane. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

A teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

When a mysterious new member joins a group of struggling authors, the friends discover that they may have a supernatural creature in their midst, who can grant a single author success above all the others—but at a cost.

A depressed, middle-aged San Francisco writer gives his artificially intelligent alter ego permission to assume his personality in public, resulting in an unexpected boom for the washed-up man.

Searching for a muse to inspire a novel he is attempting to write, an author in San Francisco finds his passions ignited by something much more sinister.