Mitka, a once-aspiring author, burns the manuscript of his much-rejected, “heartbroken” novel in a trashcan and secludes himself in his room, rebuffing all entreaties and acts of kindness from his “emotional” landlady, Mrs. Lutz, who is also a would-be writer. Because the editors who rejected his novel found its symbolism too “obscure,” Mitka now despairs of ever getting his meaning across in a form that such publishing houses will comprehend. His frustration has given him writer’s block as well as a ringing emptiness. Mrs. Lutz, worried about his reclusiveness and lack of appetite, tries to lure him out with offers of food and with the news that an attractive young woman, also a writer, has moved into the building; but Mitka loses all interest upon hearing that she writes advertising copy.

In the past, Mitka has had a dozen of his short stories published in a local paper (the Globe) that solicits fiction from its readers at five dollars “a throw.” Now, a new story in the Globe by someone named Madeleine Thorn “sock[s]” him “in the belly” with its first-person account of a young woman whose precious handwritten manuscript is burned by her landlady, who mistook the pages for litter.