You, Again

“‘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.

“‘I have a girlfriend.’ Josh pauses, considering how much to reveal […] ‘Sophie. She’s in brand management consulting. Speaks four languages. She’s the most intelligent woman I’ve ever met.’”

Josh’s description of Sophie, his long-term girlfriend, illustrates some of Josh’s dating struggles at the beginning of the novel and highlights how Sophie functions as a symbol in the text. Sophie never appears on-page, making her less a character than an emblem of Josh’s relationship to romance. His description here illustrates how he focuses on accomplishments with cultural value—speaking multiple languages, a successful career, and intelligence—rather than interpersonal connection. Josh’s ability to divorce his romantic plans from his ideas of how the “right” girlfriend “should” act ties into his gradual loosening of the idea of highbrow versus lowbrow cooking and what cultural touchstones are important to him.

“At night, when he’s trying and failing to fall asleep in his drafty bedroom, Josh hears Danny’s voice, echoing around his brain, louder than ever. Why do you gotta make everything so damn convoluted? My food wasn’t good enough for you? This time, he can’t shout back. Can’t apologize. He’ll just have to live the rest of his life with the knowledge that Danny was right.”

Josh’s grief over his father’s death becomes intertwined with his embarrassment about The Brod’s public failure and his relationship with cooking. Before his father’s death, Josh considered himself to be entirely right and Danny entirely wrong; after his failure, he inverts these positions. Hearing Danny’s voice “echoing around his brain” loudly emphasizes how his critique of his father’s style of cooking increasingly weighs on Josh after his death. Previously, he framed Danny’s food as not “good enough,” and now, he sees that his father was right. This moment marks an initial reconciliation of the two viewpoints as Josh begins to process his grief.

“‘After a couple of days, I bought myself a single bowl at Pearl River Mart. It was white, with a blue border around the rim and a dragon at the bottom. I thought it was beautiful. It felt like a New York “thing.”’

He nods. ‘It’s a classic pattern.’”

Ari’s Pearl River Mart bowl signifies several things in the novel. Cass’s choice to take the bowl illustrates Ari’s feelings about her divorce; she feels like she has had the things that make her taken from her. Josh’s recognition of the “classic” nature of the bowl shows that he is not exclusively aware of highbrow cultural touchstones. This indicates how his preference for haute cuisine is more about personal preference and a desire to differentiate himself from his father than unchangeable snobbishness. When he later gives Ari an exact copy of her stolen bowl, it shows how he sees what is important to her.

“‘Okay,’ she replies. ‘Friends. But I should warn you: Historically, I haven’t had the best track record keeping things—’

‘Platonic?’

‘Sex-free. I mean, it’s way harder to make a new friend than to find someone to fuck around with. This is, like, a really great growth opportunity for me.’

‘I can’t even remember the last time I made a friend.’”

Josh and Ari’s decision to remain friends alludes to The Rarity and Value of Friendship Over Romance, particularly when seeking romantic or sexual partners. Though Josh and Ari do end up in a romantic and sexual relationship throughout the novel, their friendship lets them get to know one another in ways that are contrasted with the first-date conversations that Josh has. The novel thus contends that while not all friendships will turn into romances, the best romances begin as friendships, which allow people to reveal their truest selves to each other.

“‘We perform because we are desperate for praise and approval and we’re deeply troubled people and I’m challenging you to take all of that grief and mine your pain for material that’s both emotionally raw and hilarious.’

‘Challenge not accepted.’”

Gabe’s comment about the importance of performing to comedians is presented here as glib. Ari’s refusal to perform after her divorce is paralleled in the text with Josh’s repeated references to skipping therapy; both of the protagonists struggle to move through their pain and grief because they avoid the activities that help them process their emotions. Here, Gabe believes that Ari is intentionally avoiding channeling her grief and pain into relatable, funny standup material.

“‘You know, every night,’ she says, ‘I like here by myself and think, “Tomorrow is the day I’ll wake up and feel okay about this.” There has to be a tipping point, right? Do you ever feel like you’re living a depressing ending, but you never get to the last page? There’s no pithy final line? It just keeps going.’”

As Ari and Josh grow closer, they discuss their mutual struggles with grief and depression. Ari here describes how one of the challenges of these emotions is their seeming endlessness, evidenced by comparing living with depression to never getting “to the last page.” She and Josh both feel stuck in their lives. Goldbeck’s narrative structure counteracts this feeling of fixedness that the characters experience. Instead, the novel’s parts, which are labeled first with a year and then with the amount of time after that first meeting, emphasize the forward movement of time, even when Ari and Josh feel certain that nothing will change.

“No one makes new friends after a breakup. It’s hard enough to be likable when you’re actually happy.”

Though the novel presents making friends as a challenge, it does not support Radhya’s claim here that friendships are best made when happy. Not only does Josh and Ari’s friendship blossom due to the fact that they can be miserable together without pretending to be happy, but Radhya and Ari’s friendship also began when Radhya was going through a divorce. This statement is thus more born of Radhya being hurt that Ari is friends with the man who fired Radhya.

“‘It’s like…I got pushed into the water. But it’s not a nice, heated pool. There’s no shallow end. I got shoved over the railing of the Titanic.’

‘Say what happened. Cass pushed you. Stop using the passive voice.’”

Here, Radhya grows frustrated with Ari’s inability to blame Cass for the pain she wrought, evidenced by her using passive voice when describing her experience. Phrases such as “I got pushed into the water” and “shoved over the railing of the Titanic” emphasize the weight of Ari’s emotional hurt after Cass left her for another woman. Ari, however, cannot yet blame her ex-wife, which leads to her reliance on the passive voice—something that Radhya directly calls out here.

“‘I was supposed to be her muse,’ she says, her voice drained of all levity.

‘That sounds very convenient for her but you’re not her love interest. You’re not the character without a personality who only exists to make someone else seem desirable.’ Josh picks up his soup spoon. ‘That’s not you.’”

Josh and Ari use character archetypes to discuss why Ari’s relationship with Cass was unhealthy—and why Ari feels pain over that loss regardless. Ari’s desire to be a “muse” correlates to her anxiety over being unworthy, but Josh points out that Cass treated Ari as an object rather than a person whose flaws are embraced and recognized. In doing so, he contrasts her with a “love interest” archetype. This, in turn, describes how Ari and Josh both function in the novel—they are people on their own journeys who fall in love with one another along the way, not people whose sole purpose is to make someone else happy.

“‘I was just getting a lecture about the pneumatic-tube waste system on Roosevelt Island.’ Ari takes a tiny step closer. ‘Good timing.’

‘That would be a first for us.’”

Josh’s quip about how he and Ari regularly have bad timing illustrates that the characters see their relationship through the genre trope that they are the right people for one another who have met at the wrong time. This emphasizes The Significance of Timing in Relationships. This comment, which Josh makes at the New Year’s Eve gala shortly before he and Ari kiss for the first time, is also ironic, as the time is not yet right for them, as the second half of the novel illustrates.

“Conveniently, the gig economy provides evergreen excuses such as: ‘Can’t tonight, I’m pouring wine/serving shrimp puffs/walking five dogs/signing terrifying relationship-severing legal paperwork/writing a bar mitzvah toast.’”

Ari’s tactic of avoiding Josh references her “gig economy” labor, a term used to describe a labor market wherein people work various, irregular, small jobs rather than one consistent position. Ari’s description of her work as an “excuse” takes on a sharper resonance later in the novel when Gabe points out that she has been using her work (the thing that ostensibly supports her comedy dreams) to avoid comedy. Here, Ari uses the excuses to avoid both Josh and her feelings about signing her divorce papers, which is implied by the way she hides the activity—“signing terrifying relationship-severing legal paperwork” in a list of other gigs such as dog walking and serving food.

“‘Believe me,’ Josh says. ‘I’m familiar with the human cost of being humiliated.’

‘No.’ She leans in. ‘We’re not the same. I’ve spent ten years taking shit from white guys like you in the kitchen,’ Radhya says, pushing the dough away from her, like she needs to focus on the argument without multitasking. ‘Watching them get promoted. Laughing off everything from microaggressions to outright sexual harassment. I’ve had to be twice as good and I don’t get the luxury of multiple chances.’”

Josh’s lackluster first apology for the way he fired Radhya fails to account for his privilege as the white male son of a famous restaurant owner. Radhya, meanwhile, as a woman of color, has a different experience in professional kitchens rife with microaggressions, sexual harassment, and no second chances. She recognizes and directly tells Josh about the privilege that “white guys like [him]” experience, which Josh regularly tries to ignore as part of his bid to separate his identity from his father’s. It is only when Josh can recognize the benefits that he received from his family and position as a white man that he can repair his relationship with Radhya, return to the kitchen, and find peace with his father’s legacy. This emphasizes Josh’s and Radhya’s different relationships to The Cost and Benefit of Following Professional Dreams due to their race and gender.

“It would be perfectly fine and nothing more. There wouldn’t bet be any stomach-tightening, slow-churning agony.

Which is much better. Healthy. It’s what I deserve.”

Josh’s feelings about “deserving” a relationship that is “perfectly fine and nothing more” cuts in two directions. While he notes that he would not have to suffer the “agony” of his relationship with Ari in such a partnership, the idea that he does not deserve “more” than a lukewarm relationship indicates that he has anxieties about whether he deserves happiness. This recognition of Josh’s insecurities, which he often obscures behind conviction in his own opinions, highlights one of the commonalities between Josh and Ari.

“If she’s flushed, it’s because she never feels comfortable when she’s not facing an exit. Which he probably doesn’t realize because she feels funny admitting that to people. Radhya picked up on it after a couple of months of living together. Ari had chalked it up to feng shui; Rad called bullshit and rearranged the furniture without saying anything more about it.”

This comment indicates how Ari’s intertwined anxieties about being rejected, left behind, and being able to leave an emotionally intimate scenario pervade her everyday life. It also hints at her complicated relationship with Radhya, who supports Ari’s needs without necessarily challenging them—though she “called bullshit” on Ari, she doesn’t probe for the deeper cause, something that puts Radhya in contrast with Josh.

“Depressed people can be in relationships. We could be waiting forever for the ‘right time.’ You’re perfect for me, exactly how you are at this moment.”

Josh’s insistence that he and Ari are well suited after the first time they have sex plays with the novel’s “right person, wrong time” trope. He insists that waiting for a perfect time forces him into passivity in his relationships, something that the novel supports in its emphasis on how relationships are made out of choices, not chance. He also believes that mental health challenges do not preclude one from starting a relationship, evidenced by his assertion that “depressed people can be in relationships.” Despite believing that Ari is “perfect” for him exactly how she is, Ari does not yet feel ready to be in a relationship with Josh. This further emphasizes the significance of timing in relationships.

“But when has he ever let himself feel good?”

Though the novel focuses heavily on Ari’s self-sabotaging in her relationship with Josh, Josh here recognizes that he has the same tendencies. Learning to relax and pursue the things that make him happy (instead of the things he feels he should want from life) helps him become honest with Ari about his feelings. This leads to their eventual reconciliation.

“For some mysterious reason, this company that runs on labor of under-employed actors has an ‘executive leadership team’ of nineteen people, all of whom are undoubtedly very well compensated and have 401(k)s.”

Working at WinProv, Ari sees the imbalance of gig economies even more sharply. This is brought into particular focus when she gives a workshop at NeverTired, the website where she used to work for small fees. She grows angry when she learns that these well-paid members of the executive leadership team brainstorm ways that they can get more work from lower-level employees without paying them. The novel thus comments on how the gig economy contributes to income inequality. While the executive leadership has 401(k)s, evidence of retirement savings and employee benefits, Ari emphasizes that gig workers like herself do not have this same financial security.

“I just wanted to tell my best friend that I’m excited. I wanted to tell you all the mundane details that no one else would care about. The stuff that my husband would be forced to listen to if I still had a husband. But I don’t. I had you. And I wanted you to be excited and ask me a thousand questions and sleep over at my place and eat every test dish. I wanted you to be here for the opening. I wanted you to be part of it.”

Radhya’s speech about how Ari has been absent from her life after leaving New York illustrates how Ari’s fear of emotional intimacy in hard times does not exclusively apply to romantic relationships. Though Radhya’s speech pertains to physical distance when she references wishing that Ari could sleep over and eat test dishes, her central complaint is due to the emotional distance that Ari has maintained. This has made both Ari and Radhya unhappy.

“But after more than a year of depriving himself of his primary source of confidence, it’s some kind of triumph, even if he’s the supporting actor instead of the star.”

Josh’s return to the kitchen as he works at Radhya’s pop-up is marked by his self-awareness that in keeping away from cooking, he has been preventing himself from regaining the confidence he lost due to the failure of The Brod. Josh is presented here as being considerably happier in the kitchen because he’s a supporting actor, which takes the pressure off—something he would experience as “the star”—and still lets him do what he loves. This marks a notable shift in Josh’s relationship to the cost and benefit of following professional dreams.

“Briar walks past the counter, into the kitchen, returning with a plate of iced cookie pieces: broken black-and-off-white frosted circles. ‘I hoard the imperfect ones.’”

Briar’s valuation of imperfect black-and-white cookies, which remain delicious, serves as a metaphor for Josh and Ari’s relationship. By this point in the novel, they have both accepted that something does not have to be perfect to be good or worthwhile. This is something that Ari, in particular, has to accept about herself to summon the courage to risk emotional intimacy with both Radhya and Josh.

“I tried to center my world around you instead of actually rebuilding my life.”

Josh’s admission that he oriented his life around Ari during the year of their friendship instead of focusing on his own needs illustrates the significance of timing in relationships. It shows that this time apart helped both protagonists understand themselves better, which will make them better partners.

“In the years of preparing absurdly complex dishes for the city’s most discerning diners, Josh isn’t sure he’s ever made people as happy as the regulars at Brodsky’s seemed to be.”

Working in Radhya’s kitchen, which is in the Brodksy’s building, helps Josh embrace cooking as something that is not just about cultural capital like in fine-dining environments—evidenced by the phrase “preparing absurdly complex dishes”— but something that can bring joy to the people who eat that food. This shows his ability to reconcile his desires with his father’s legacy at the end of the novel; he still wishes to cook using his flavor preferences, but he embraces the importance of making food enjoyable for “regulars” as opposed to “the city’s most discerning diners.”