The inciting action occurs when lonely protagonist John Brown learns with consternation that his friend and former love Janet Hayakawa has mischievously placed an amorous advertisement of Brown in the newspaper in his behalf; the advertisement is answered, at length, by trial-lawyer Elisabeth ('Liz') Dorati.

At the time of the novel's composition, Seth was a graduate student in Economics at Stanford University.

While conducting tedious research for his dissertation, Seth would divert himself with trips to the Stanford Bookstore: On one such occasion, I found in the poetry section, two translations of Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin's great novel in verse.

I loved the form, the ability that Pushkin had to run through a wide range of emotions, from absolute flippancy to real sorrow and passages that would make you think, during and after reading it.

[4][5][6] At intervals, various characters discuss arguments either against or in favor of homosexuality, Christianity, civil disobedience, feminism, and tolerance; whereas the narrative, by example of danger or anti-intellectualism, implies warning against alcoholism or carelessness, and elsewhere criticizes news-media and art-criticism for unjust treatment of their subjects.