Samson Shillitoe is a New York City-based poet of great promise and some renown, but he's troubled, which causes problems. He is four months behind in alimony payments, unable to clear that outstanding debt with his day job as a carpet cleaner. But he sees this as not so much his problem: it's for the courts, the police, and his ex-wife Beverly. He has difficulties not acting upon his general attraction to women; in return, they act on the same attractions. He is in the process of writing his epic poem, and has been for five years and counting, but he's got a severe writer's block--and might be substituting sex for that inability to write. His long-suffering, loyal, current wife, working-class Rhoda Shillitoe, believes Samson's problems might lead him to attempt suicide. He is already prone to violent outbursts, although any violence toward her she knows is only in jest; she knows he'd never physically hurt her on purpose. When she sees psychotherapist Dr. Oliver West on a TV talk show, she believes he could solve Samson's problems. Samson doesn't want to talk to Dr. West about his life, but he agrees to see him largely out of circumstance; his creative juices are starting to flow again and he thinks he could use Dr. West's place as a place to write while hiding from the police who are after him. But Samson's association with Dr. West has its own complications, most specifically with Dr. West's unhappy wife, Lydia West, who is neglected by her husband; and with Dr. West's colleague Dr. Menken, who is looking for a human subject to test his new surgical procedure: lobotomy.