The Illiterate is an absurdist comedy about a writer named Jones who wakes up one morning unable to read. After discovering his illiteracy, Jones consults a number of doctors and friends. But instead of providing relief, his encounters make him increasingly confused and ultimately cause his life to fall apart. His illiteracy creates an existential crisis - a crisis further complicated by the simple fact that Jones suffers from an ailment that no one he seeks help from can understand. Feeling alienated from his former life, Jones eventually embraces the nihilism his new condition seems to push him toward. He embarks on a surreal adventure throughout New York City, one governed only by his impulses and instinctual reactions, which culminates when he's tricked into working as a sideshow freak on Coney Island. In the end, left with only a crippling sense of paranoia, Jones decides to leave the city for good in order to distance himself from his past and focus on his future. Immediately after he acts on this resolution and finds himself in a car speeding away from the city, Jones discovers that, oddly enough, he can read once again.