Incompetence is a novel about a man's pilgrimage to the gravesite of Ernest Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho. After university administrators criticize his courses for being insufficiently "literary," and for not including measurable competencies, a literature professor journeys to Hemingway's grave in hopes that America's most famous novelist may shed light on the mystery of literary competence. On the way to Ketchum, he must pick up his teenage son at the home of his ex-wife and her lesbian lover. He must also sort out the confused events that led to the dissolution of his marriage and his growing attachment to Aletheia, a ballet dancer, and her three-footed cat, Oedipus. On the day of his fiftieth birthday, he swears an oath at Hemingway's grave in Ketchum to write a novel about incompetence.