Abie Bashkin is a writer and college professor whose career started brilliantly but has stalled for some time, feels trapped in a monotonous world. He has failed as a social person, as a lover, as a successful author. A series of random events make him decide to dump the intellectual recognition for money and fame. He is a best-selling artist now. Abie becomes his hero but mostly in his mind. He faces each day and each night the real possibility that his psyche is being invaded by the self-disintegrative processes of an actual psychosis, but instead of being worried, he laughs about it.