Brandauer is a world-famous writer, but he is extremely private, and doesn't give much of himself to the world. The narrator, a journalist who meets him to do an interview with him, is a man who struggles with his weight and his relationship to food, as well as with his career and marriages. The two become sort of friends, meeting up over the years at conferences that Brandauer is teaching at. Brandauer only teaches one thing— Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist." Nothing else. This infuriates one girl, a fiery southern belle who just wants Brandauer's opinion on her writing. The journalist, Brandauer, and the girl, Penelope, meet on multiple occasions over the course of the years.

Brandauer is extremely particular, wanting everything in his life to be orderly, never more than just enough, always less. He tries to instill this in everyone around him— in the narrator with his everchanging jobs, wives, and weight, and Penelope with her passionate and personal prose. On the second occasion that Penelope and the narrator meet, she complains about how he "poisoned her hope" of being a writer, and he consoles her. The two end up in bed together.

The narrator sees Brandauer after losing 47 pounds at a dieting center, and gifts him a poem based on "A Hunger Artist" that he'd written. Brandauer seems to like it and quotes it in his class the next day. Finally, the narrator visits Brandauer on his deathbed in a hospital in Miami, where he meets his wife and learns about Brandauer's secret family from Italy for the first time. Brandauer dies, of a heart attack, talking about panthers and eating in his last moments. After his death, the narrator and Penny meet up at another conference, though their reason for being there is no longer alive. They speak about Brandauer, about what his life had meant. Penny fixates on the idea that he knew all along he was dying, that he had a heart condition, and figures that was why he lived the way he did, such an ascetic life. Penny has become a better writer. The two end up in bed together again, and the narrator thinks about a future with her.