After losing his job in a donut bakery, Rudi sleeps, wakes, and dreams in the quiet of his apartment, waiting each day for the mail to arrive. A chance meeting at the unemployment office leads to a conversation about meaning with an immigrant mute and to a fateful visit from the strangely attractive but obviously troubled Rhonda Lingo. Restless and unfulfilled, Rudi leaves his city and spends time in exile in foreign parts, but eventually returns and finds work in a small muffin bakery, his only co-worker a possibly homicidal dropout from a PhD program in philosophy. Then, in an urban convenience store, he has another fateful meeting. Described by the author as a thinly disguised erratalieography and considered to be one of the central works of denuded centripetal philology, The Rational Man tells a universal story of a man struggling to find his way amidst the fundamental mysteries of how to live in the world.