Joseph Geist sees himself as a man of grand ideas. He clothes are tattered. He owns only a few books and a half bust of Nietzsche. But after eight years of study and professing, he's bounced from Harvard's Ph.D. program in philosophy, and a disagreement with his lover gets him bounced from her apartment. Broke and virtually homeless, he answers an ad in the Crimson for a "Conversationalist". Six weeks after beginning his duties, Joseph is invited to move into the grand Victorian home of Alma, his brilliant, witty, and cultured employer-interlocutor. Joseph develops a deep respect and affection for the septuagenarian and, after much philosophical rumination, concludes that he's never been happier. But his idyll soon becomes a nightmare.