Al Roosten, a local business owner always second-best to his competitor, Larry Donfrey, contemplates returning to an anti-drug charity event to ensure that Donfrey is able to help his disabled daughter.

When a Soviet state official attempts to coerce a celebrated poet into apologizing for a political joke he made, the official gets a taste of his own predatory medicine at the hand of the poet's vengeful wife.

A grocer in desperate need of help enlists a lawyer to fix his problems, though he refuses to trust the lawyer enough to actually receive help.

An author discusses with his friend the best way to write about a poor aunt. Their words take on a new power when he manifests a literal poor aunt on his back and draws in spectators.

The characters found in jokes are forced to act out the jokes every time they are told.

A schoolmarm attempts to teach a group of men about justice, time, and irony in a repurposed saloon after they vote to have her hung for her disciplinarian ways.

In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

In 1960s Boston, a Jewish deli owner who struggles to come up with his newest joke stumbles into a scam with more ramifications than he could have ever dreamed possible.

After an assistant professor mistakes an endangered albatross for a duck and kills it, she reevaluates how she perceives others and how others perceive her as the assumptions she makes about others threaten her job and her marriage.

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.