Professor Leaf, an absent-minded poet with a prejudice against the sciences, is forced to face the fact that his son is a math prodigy with little artistic talent of his own.

This black comedy opens with Louisa Foster donating a multimillion dollar check to the IRS. The tax department thinks she’s crazy and sends her to a psychiatrist. She then discusses her four marriages, in which all of her husbands became incredibly rich and died prematurely because of their drive to be rich.