Inside, Outside
Herman Wouk
 The story alternates between Goodkind telling his family history and early years (specifically, his first 26 years (1915-1941)) and his account of current events in 1973, leading up to the Yom Kippur War. The tales of Goodkind's early years describe his family - his mother and father, his sister, his mother's father and father's mother, his mother's half sister, and a tribe of more distant uncles, aunts and cousins (the 'Mishpokha', Yiddish for 'family'). After college, Goodkind works for Harry Goldhandler, a gagwriter for radio comedies (very loosely based on David Freedman), and has a romance with showgirl Bobby Webb. The tales of his present day in 1973 are centered on his wife, his daughter, their friends, and Peter Quat, a college friend who also worked for Goldhandler, and who had become a famous novelist for his sexually explicit characters and unflattering depictions of American Jewish life. Quat's books seem similar to the work of Philip Roth, but Roth did not attend Columbia nor work for Freedman. As a young man, Goodkind becomes less observant, but his adult self has returned to the Orthodox practices of his father and grandfather. Goodkind as a child and young man is embarrassed by his first name "Israel", mockingly shortened by several other characters to "Izzy". In the last scene of the novel when Goodkind returns to the U.S. after the Yom Kippur war, he tells an El Al flight attendant to call him Israel.