Four Jewish intellectuals carpool to the funeral of their old friend Leslie Braverman, who died suddenly at age 41.

Friends gather for the funeral of a friend. Sub-plots unfold as the group attempts to link-up to attend the funeral of their friend, Braverman.—<[email protected]>

Four Jewish intellectuals and writers are shocked to hear that their friend Leslie Braverman has died suddenly from a heart attack. They decide to carpool it in a crowded Volkswagon Beetle from Manhattan to Brooklyn to attend the funeral, but they become lost and their odyssey becomes a journey of self-discovery.—[email protected]

Early one Sunday morning in New York, Morroe Rieff is shocked to learn that his friend Leslie Braverman, a fellow writer and intellectual, is dead. Morroe visits his friend's widow, Inez, and receives the second shock of the day when the supposedly bereaved widow tries to make love to him. Pulling himself together, Morroe prepares to attend the funeral services in Brooklyn with Braverman's three other close friends--Barnet Weiner, who gives up a Sunday in bed with his mistress Myra Mandelbaum; Felix Ottensteen, the oldest of the group; and Holly Levine, the most commercially successful writer of the quartet. Meeting in Greenwich Village, the four friends pile into Holly's Volkswagen, set out for the synagogue, and get lost. An accident with a Negro cab driver almost creates a brawl; but when it is discovered that the cabbie, like themselves, is Jewish, hard feelings mellow into streetcorner philosophizing and drinking. Eventually, the four friends reach the synagogue and dutifully sit through a marathon sermon before realizing they are attending the funeral services of a total stranger. Despite their exhaustion, they continue on until they locate Braverman's gravesite. When Morroe returns home that night and attempts to tell his wife about all the events of the day, he suddenly stops talking and begins to weep.

In New York City, less than grieving Inez Braverman informs Morroe Rieff that her husband, writer Leslie Braverman, has died suddenly and unexpectedly at age forty-one. Morroe having contact with Inez has never sat well with Morroe's wife, Etta Rieff, in what Inez represents to Morroe in his life before their marriage, in Inez's openly flirtatious manner, and in Morroe always seeming to run to her beck and call. Rather than attend the Sunday funeral in Brooklyn with Inez as was his original thought, Morroe instead, at the last minute, contacts their somewhat mutual but not oft visited friends Barnet Weinstein, Felix Ottensteen, and Holly Levine - all Jewish, all facing some issue in their respective life, and all writers in some form or another in their own right - to carpool to the funeral together in Holly's compact VW Beetle, this plan despite, beyond the issue of the cramped quarters of the car, the four men living in the four different corners of Manhattan. The four men kvetch about their lives on their drive, only infrequently in relation to their friend Braverman, their talk affected by what happens along the way, with the trip itself potentially extended in Morroe only having a scant idea of where in Brooklyn the funeral and burial are being held. The situation has the added effect of Morroe daydreaming about his own mortality and what would be happening with those in his life if he was in Braverman's place, he watching the proceedings as a bystander in he taking on a different persona in each case.—Huggo