When talented young writer Elizabeth Wurtzel earns a scholarship to Harvard, she sees it as her chance to escape the pressures of her working-class background and concentrate on her true talent. But what starts out so promising leads to self-destructive behavior and paralyzing depression that reflects an entire generation's struggle to navigate the effects of divorce, drugs, sex, and high expectations.
Liam White's career has peaked—to put it kindly. Uninspired and burnt-out, the titular character loses his will to finish his next novel and even shirks his public appearance commitments. To top it all off, Liam is told by his oncologist that his cancer has returned. Resigned to the fact that his life will soon come to an end, he begins a journey of reflection as he comes to grips with his life thus far and the people who shaped him, for better and worse.
A writer tries unsuccessfully to sell his screenplays and plays. He marries a television editor, but she only wants to fuck him and thinks nothing of his work. He then remembers his old Parisian lover Rita, calls himself Rita from then on and becomes her wife. When a French director stages a play of his, he meets Rita again in Paris and the two women become a happy couple.
A young writer, John Hale, inherits a fortune and moves into an alleged-haunted castle with his servant "Rusty." He discovers the 'hauntee' to be Countess von Baden, hiding in a secret chamber with her son, whom the court has awarded to her divorced husband.
A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.
After a bad breakup with his girlfriend leaves him heartbroken, Carter Webb moves to Michigan to take care of his ailing grandmother. Once there, he gets mixed up in the lives of the mother and daughters who live across the street.
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
When 19-year-old gay-rights activist Tommy and 24-year-old Alan first meet in 1973, they find themselves on the opposite sides of the political coin...
Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.
A disillusioned young writer living in New York City turns to drugs and drinking to block out the memories of his dead mother and estranged wife.
Matthieu is a 33 year old Parisian who finds out that the father he never knew has died and decides to go to his funeral in order to meet his two siblings in Quebec. But once in Montréal, he realizes that nobody is aware of his existence or even interested in it. He is alone, in hostile territory…
William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.
Takizawa Bakin, a popular Edo period author, begins to recount a story he is planning in front of his friend, the artist Katsushika Hokusai. The story is about eight warriors who, each carrying a jewel, gather together as if guided by fate and embark on a harsh journey to fight the curse of the Satomi family. Hokusai is drawn into the story that Bakin is telling, and visits Bakin on various occasions to hear the rest of the story, and a strange relationship between the two begins. The serialization becomes Bakin's life's work, with the idea of "rewarding good and punishing evil in a world where evil is rampant," but after 28 years, as the story finally approaches its climax, Bakin begins to lose his sight. With the completion of the story in doubt, he receives an unexpected proposal from his daughter-in-law. Will the story ever be completed?
Vienna, in the 1930s. The attractive and famous writer Albert Rank receives the letter from a stranger. He discovers that she devoted her entire life to her boundless love. In her letter, Rose looks back on a variety of meetings with Albert: Since childhood, she is slavishly in love with him and she never got away from her throughout her life. In many encounters Rank could not recognize them, even if the shared moments had been wonderful. As an adult woman, Rose's love is too painful to go on, and she has dire consequences.
After young film writer Leo has his latest screenplay rejected he retreats to his summer home on an island, on his way he meets the flight attendant Virgo and a romance soon blossoms.
Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.
Set in 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.
In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.
The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.
Grady is a 50-ish English professor who hasn't had a thing published in years—not since he wrote his award winning 'Great American Novel' 7 years ago. This weekend proves even worse than he could imagine as he finds himself reeling from one misadventure to another in the company of a new wonder boy author.