You, Again

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, mental illness, and cursing.

“‘My dad taught me the fine art of assembling corned beef sandwiches and scooping cole slaw.’ The sum total of his father’s culinary training had taken place at the deli, working his way from busboy, to prep cook, to grill man, to cutter. His father had never cooked in another restaurant. He’d barely cooked in his own apartment, aside from opening cans of soup. ‘He’s not a chef. That’s a title you earn in a real kitchen. Not Brodsky’s.’”

Here, Josh emphasizes the distinction between a chef and a cook to Ari; this reveals many aspects of his personality that will develop throughout the novel. Josh’s disdain for his father Danny’s cooking (which Josh considers lowbrow and inelegant compared to his preference for haute cuisine) is pronounced and uncomplicated before his father’s death. The author juxtaposes Josh’s understanding of a chef, a title earned in a “real kitchen,” with his father, whose entire culinary training took place at the deli. Danny’s death, coupled with the failure of The Brod and Josh’s interactions with Radhya, will make him reconsider this stance.

“‘I know why you’re like this […] You’re so afraid of rejection, you have to latch on to some cultural studies bullshit to support your behavior.’ His accent is poking through. ‘It doesn’t make you some brave badass.’”

Josh’s indictment of Ari’s disdain for monogamy is presented by the novel as being both fair and unfair. While Ari’s fear of rejection causes her to avoid romantic intimacy (and sometimes even platonic intimacy), her desire for multiple sexual partners is not framed as being wrong. Though Ari later finds that her encounters with non-monogamous couples are not right for her, the novel indicates that this is due to Ari’s anxieties about emotional intimacy, not due to a negative attitude toward polyamory. Cass later emerges as a foil to Josh’s accusation that Ari depends on “cultural studies bullshit”; while Ari does use some such rationalization to try to avoid confronting her fear of rejection, the novel shows that Cass embraces and weaponizes the language of cultural studies in a more pointed and cruel manner.