This classic novel is the story of what happens when an idealistic, fiercely honest young man tries to reconcile Roman Catholic dogma with the realities of America of the 1940s. In this brilliantly comic and pungent tale, Lardner dissects the thought control of the McCarthy era, business ethics, racial intolerance, repressive sexual attitudes, the Manhattan nightclub set, "enlightened" penology, vigilantism, and other social phenomena.

The ecstasy which Owen Muir seeks is of both the earthly and the spiritual kind, and his wonderfully funny fate lies in the fact that he cannot have his flesh and eat it, too.