Why do the world's greatest novelists suddenly start writing better stories when the author of a boys' detective series goes missing? What happens when a two-fisted private eye wades into the brutal jungle of the poetry business? Such are the questions Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones tackle in stories originally published in the National Lampoon and collected here for the first time. Also included are three new adventures of the improbable costars of MY PAL SPLENDID MAN: Will Jones, an aspiring writer who doesn't get out much, and Calv'In of Strontium, who helps his pal develop a social life as his pal tutors him about literature.Finally, Ed and Johnny, heroes of MILLION DOLLAR IDEAS, those indefatigably hustling screenwriters who are determined to set postwar Hollywood on fire with their highly original-and strangely anachronistic-movie ideas, return for six new stories. Their latest schemes bring them into collision with American icons ranging from William Faulkner to Stepin Fetchit to the Red-baiting agents of the FBI.