More than thirty-five years ago, Gordon Meyers had a low number in the draft pick so he packed his belongings and reluctantly left Glenna Rising, a med student without whom he could't imagine living. Now, decades later, Gordon is a former globe-trotting consultant with a grown son and an ex-wife an overwhelming desire to see Glenna again. Glenna is astonished when Gordon walks into her Manhattan office, but agrees to accompany him for a drink. Together they rediscover the passion that drew them together before it tore them apart. As the evening progresses, Gordon will finally reveal the true reason for his return.

An artists falls in love with his young model.

A whirling top most of his life, Michael Goldberg's world changes when his dying shrink bequeaths to him the tapes of thirty years of Michael's therapy sessions. The tapes give Michael a second chance in middle age: they unlock his life for him, as a gallery of absurd and touching characters, events and scenes spring out of his past: the shrink who cracks up and reverses roles with Michael when his wife dies; a first love encountered again in desperate, ravaged middle age; a Communist Party leader who "would rather be a lamppost in Moscow than President of the United States"; a "glistening failure" of a father who is a cheerleader of Michael's defeat ("You can fail, Michael, if you try! I did it, why can't you?"); the fetish porn-drenched world of old TImes Square; a Holocaust survivor Michael meets on September 11th who cannot confront his experience; a Hollywood of elderly Jewish moguls, scholarly and bizarre, "who seemed to have been shipped fresh to California from New York like onion bagels or seeded bialies"---- men like Michael's mentor, Julius Birnbach, creator of the cult classic, The Curse of the Evil Midgets. As Michael reclaims his life, The Great Kisser becomes a story of gratitude ---- of many kisses ---- by its climax ...