It is about the life of writer Charles 'Chub' Fuller, who while attending Oberlin College from 1968 to 1972 channels his childhood experiences as the only child of an alcoholic, suicidal father and a moody, impossible-to-please mother into a series of short stories, shared only with his friend and foil Stanley 'Two-Brew' Kitchel.

Chub's writing continues, usually after a collision of an emotional experience in his daily life with a childhood memory, and results in a series of short stories.

Over one Christmas break, he visits his mother to surprise her with his published short story, but she sees herself portrayed negatively and explodes.

Chub lives in New York doing research for other writers, paralyzed by the incandescent emotion of his father's suicide, Jesse's death and his divorce.

At a party for Two-Brew celebrating his ascension to head of the publishing company, he meets Bonita Kraus ("The Bone"), a tall, intense ex-model with aspirations of writing in the genre of Trash.

Two wounded people, they share intimacy of a sort, but only when Sandy Smith, a nubile young fan of Under the Weather shows up at Chub's doorstep and stays does he feel the urge to love and write again.

His efforts to untangle the case make his writer's impulse run even more strongly, and he works up an outline of the story, shows it to Two-Brew and gets the cherished "On to the next" reaction.