A man recounts his life experience in New York, covering the various people near and dear to him, as well as the growth of the city itself.

A New Yorker working at a salon spends her time observing people she meets on the subway and at work. Though she meets a lot of people between washing hair and riding the subway to and from work, she avoids talking to them except for the rare occasions when she has to.

A stalled novelist and his intellectual social circle wrestle with postwar malaise in the changing cultural landscape of early 1960s New York City. When one of his friends finally snaps, he races to protect him amidst smoldering racial tensions.

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

A New Yorker in HR is sent to her company's branch in a midwestern town for six weeks, where she finds herself taken by a minimalist lifestyle. However, her husband's criticism leads her to slink back to her old city life.

A lawyer working in New York comes across a mysterious woman on the docks who comes to claim him as her own and reinvent his life.

A writer finds himself entangled in the lives of his college friends, an ex-literature professor and his wife, decades after they graduate. They pursue love and their literary dreams mind a chaotic New York City of the 1960s.

Two men putting on a production for their New York theater company seek out a legendary, elderly actor, but upon finding him, they meet a man as dilapidated as the theater he once worked for.

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.

A Jewish communist quit working at an editorial bureau where his co-workers are bothered by his leftist ideology because of his boss' praises of him.