As he's chauffeured about in his official limousine, aging City Commissioner of Streets Bobbo Druff comes to a frightening realization: he has lost force, the world has started to condescend to him. His once fear-inspiring figure has become everyone's little old lady. In retaliation, Druff constructs a paranoid plot—his "MacGuffin"—in which (he believes) everyone is out to get him. With unabashed enthusiasm Druff starts an illicit affair (in order to incriminate himself), instigates fights with his employees, invents lies for his family—in short, does everything in his power to create a world in which he is placed safely and firmly at the scandalous center.

One of Elkin's greatest comic figures, Druff's self-conscious madness is surprisingly smart and hilariously inventive. Few characters in modern literature show such immense creativity and courage in the face of such a hopeless dilemma—the very slipperiness of existence itself.