Being an Outsider

In terms of both content and style, the book communicates quite clearly that as a youth, and perhaps even as an adult, the author felt / feels as though he doesn't belong, as though he doesn't fit. The narrative defines two aspects to this experience. First, while living very much inside what he perceives as a close knit community, the longings that he feels for something more, for broader experiences (of emotion, of sensation, of simply being) place him, he strongly feels, outside that community and its (traditional? restrictive? self-denying?) beliefs and perspectives. Second, and perhaps paradoxically, he also feels as though his membership in that community combines with other circumstances to place him "outside" the world to which he instinctively feels he truly belongs. In other words, he senses that his Jewishness, his youth, his relative poverty, and the intellectual, spiritual narrowness of the community in...