“What do I want to hear? Not the stuff she tells me, but Amy thinks I have no idea what girls are like. The way they design their personalities to please other people, which is what she says she did. But Miri doesn’t actually care that much about other people; she’s more like me.”

Tom describes his relationship with his daughter, Miriam (Miri), by describing Amy’s opinion of it. These remarks show Tom’s reluctance to reflect on why he and Miri are close. In addition, the passage shows how Tom understands himself in opposition to Amy. He struggles to simply claim his relationships and opinions as his own, without remarking on how they contrast with Amy’s.

“How is it not my business? You spend your life as a guy getting slammed for objectifying women, and then you have a daughter and you’re supposed to stand back and let her spend however long she wants in front of the bathroom mirror, basically turning herself into an object. Well, whatever; if that’s the system, it’s the system, I don’t expect to change the world.”

Tom’s remarks on Miri’s coming of age and his experience parenting a teenage girl provide insight into his conservative viewpoints and his often-problematic view of others who don’t share his experience. The passage has a defensive tone, revealing Tom’s desire to absolve himself and to prove that his opinions of how Miri dresses and behaves are more justified than his wife’s. He ends up dismissing the topic (”well, whatever”), which conveys his avoidant nature.

“Last year I had an issue with a couple of students—I teach a class on hate crime, which always provokes strong reactions. For some reason they decided to take it up with the dean. She’s very…she tends to take the students’ side. Nothing happened but if they connect my name to the Kirkland investigation, which they will…I don’t see how I can avoid it now; it’s just a matter of time.”

Tom’s description of his vocational conflicts introduces the novel’s theme of The Friction Arising from Culture Wars. Tom is acknowledging the trouble he has gotten into as a result of the classes he teaches, his opinions, and the cases he has chosen to work on, but he doesn’t truly meditate on the implications of these things. He realizes that he can’t “avoid it now” and that it’s “just a matter of time” before he must take accountability for his decisions, but he doesn’t make a concerted effort to change as a result.

“There’s a phrase that used to go through my thoughts—the heavy tread of middle age on the family stairs. Moving around the house I sounded more and more like my dad, with an off in each step.”

Tom’s internal monologue in this moment speaks to the novel’s theme of Navigating Identity in Middle Age. Tom compares his own movements and sounds to those of his father years ago. This comparison implies that Tom is aware that he’s getting older and that he fears owning his mortality.

“Miri, when she came down to breakfast, sometimes called me Puff Daddy. I called her P Daughter, it was part of the routine. I didn’t mind, because it meant she didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t want her to worry. She thought it was just a middle-aged thing. And maybe it was, because as the day wore on my face drained and I started to look like myself again.”

The way Tom describes his undiagnosed symptoms in this passage reiterates his avoidant, dismissive nature. Although he has been waking up with a puffy face and leaky eyes every morning for months, he has done nothing to thoroughly investigate or address this issue. Instead, he passes it off as a joke. He doesn’t want Miri to worry, and he also doesn’t want to acknowledge that his health might be in jeopardy.

“I felt very low. Homeless. Miri was gone, Michael was in LA. I had no job to go back to. The bed was made but probably hadn’t been changed in years; everything seemed dusty. But you go through the usual routine, you brush your teeth in the bathroom, you fold your clothes and lay them on the chair.”

In this passage, Tom experiences a rare bout of emotionality. He’s alone at his friend’s house. The setting and circumstances compel him into thought and challenge him to acknowledge what he’s feeling, and why. Instead of sitting in the discomfort of his life changes, however, Tom continues with “the usual routine,” using his daily habits as a diversion from his emotions.

“It just seems like one of the stories people tell about themselves. Maybe it’s true. I don’t know. I don’t know how we can tell the difference, if it is or not. I don’t see that it changes anything.”

Tom’s telephone dialogue with his wife in this scene captures his frequent lack of emotionality and empathy. He doesn’t sympathize with Amy’s experience when she compares her adolescent trauma to Michael’s. His refusal to give Amy’s experience credence conveys his fear of admitting how embittered he is toward his wife, and thematically contributes to The Fear of Emotional Confrontation.

“‘I got a kid here, Todd Gimmell, who’s been staying with me for a couple of days…he played for us last year, on a two-way contract. Anyway, he wants to bring a class-action lawsuit against the club. For systematic discrimination against white players. Very smart kid, real head on his shoulders. This may be what you’ve been looking for. I mean, the prima facie evidence is overwhelming. So call me. This is our chance to get some of our own back,’ Brian said.”

Brian leaves Tom a voicemail while he’s staying with Sam Tierney, which propels Tom’s journey across the country. Tom is yet unsure what his future holds or what he’ll do next. However, his college friend’s voicemail gives him the excuse he needs to stay on the road. Brian’s message also speaks to the narrative theme of The Friction Arising from Culture Wars. Brian is defending Todd Gimmell’s discriminatory beliefs and implicitly assuming that Tom is of the same mind. Tom explores this case because he wants to be around people whose beliefs don’t challenge his own

“If you call Amy now the person you talk to will not be the person in your head, for whom you have these warm and simple feelings. It will be another person, who doesn’t like you very much these days, with whom you get into stupid arguments. Also, I didn’t want to explain myself to her, what I was doing, at least until it was clearer to me.”

Tom’s time on the road, away from Amy, creates more distance between them. Although he thinks about and imagines conversations with Amy throughout his road trip, Tom is reluctant to actually communicate with her. He fears doing so because he prefers to see her as he chooses rather than for who she really is and for what she’s actually experiencing. The passage thematically underscores The Fear of Emotional Confrontation.

“It was like grad school again, when I tried to churn out my dissertation on Updike and realized, I don’t want to write about other people’s experiences or ideas of the world, I want to have my own; but I didn’t really want to do that either. I just wanted to sit around and read books for the rest of my life.”

Tom’s tepid attempt to start writing a book about basketball provides insight into his character. Trying his hand at writing again makes him feel like he’s in “grad school again,” but recalling his youthful academic experiences doesn’t give him a surge of energy. Rather, he recalls how disinterested he has always been in writing “about other people’s experiences or ideas” or even forming his own ideas. Tom is an apathetic character who resists change and reflection because he dislikes discomfort.

“Can your subconscious express itself through the self-absorption of a neurotic teenage girl? I don’t know, but it wasn’t a picnic for me either. In the long years afterward, it did occur to me sometimes that maybe Bianca had responded to something. That Amy even in those early days felt like she was giving ground to me.”

Tom’s flashback to Amy’s conflict with Bianca (one of her students) compels him to reflect on the devolution of his marriage. He uses this memory to understand his wife in the present and how she has changed over the course of their relationship. He wants to attach meaning to her conflict with Bianca because it would offer him a neat explanation for how and why Amy “is the way she is.” In doing so, he again paints himself as a target, thus avoiding taking accountability for his part in their marital strain.

“But still, every time I was about to see him, I felt this rush of childish eagerness clutching my heart, which was replaced, when I did see him, with something more complicated. A feeling like, we both have to protect ourselves against this level of intimacy.”

Tom’s reflections on his relationship with his brother, Eric, provide more insight into Tom’s character and fear of intimacy. Although he admits to feeling a “rush of childish eagerness clutching his heart” each time he sees Eric again, he immediately quashes this intense and tender emotion. He insists that he must protect himself against it, and he thus pulls away from Eric once more. This self-defense mechanism effectively distances Tom from all his loved ones.

“I think Sharon liked me; it’s awkward to write this, but she gave me that impression. And maybe that’s why, when Eric said, show me, she finally said, all right, line one up, and stood behind him with her hips against his ass and her hand on his elbow and slowly guided his cue. While giving me a look, maybe she wanted to make me jealous, I don’t know.”

Tom’s colloquial narration creates multiple tonal effects at once. Tom breaks the fourth wall by addressing the fact that he’s writing, which creates greater potential for narrative openness and vulnerability. However, Tom is also remarking on his brother’s foolishness and asserting that he has always been more attractive to women than Eric. Rather than taking a reflective, confessional tone, the passage conveys Tom’s feigned humility and sense of self-importance.

“It was about eighty degrees outside, just a perfect September day. All of the roads were wide and empty, most of the buildings were office space. Above and between them, you could see cloudless blue sky. Nobody tells you what an intense experience loneliness is, how it has a lot of variations. Just hour by hour. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that the three months of Amy’s affair must have been one of the most exciting periods of her life. From which I was excluded, although maybe she felt like I was part of it, too.”

Tom’s time on the road circumstantially offers him the opportunity to think, reflect, and change. The imagery of his driving on “wide and empty” roads under a “cloudless blue sky” implies that Tom has physical space around him that creates emotional space for him to process thoughts about his life. His descriptions of his surroundings, in turn, reveal his reflections on his loneliness and on Amy’s affair and his marriage. This passage reflects how Tom’s road trip is a metaphor for his growth journey.

“It was great to see him. Nothing ever changed when you saw him, we were still twenty years old, a couple of guys. But I knew within five minutes that I wouldn’t open up to him about anything.”

Tom’s relationship with Brian Palmetto stunts Tom’s growth. When he’s with his college friend, he feels as if he’s still in his twenties and has no real cares or responsibilities. Instead of showing Brian how he has changed and opening up to him about the reality of his circumstances, Tom slips easily back into this immature dynamic because it’s easier for him. This is one of the thematic difficulties Tom faces in Navigating Identity in Middle Age: As he ages, he’s reluctant to adapt and evolve, instead craving the ease of reverting to a familiar version of himself.

“Come on, you don’t even believe that. Just look at the way the media talks about white players. Imagine a business where ten percent of the population makes up eighty percent of the workforce, where people are making millions and millions of dollars…you’d think something was going on.”

Brian’s character echoes Tom’s beliefs and gives him an excuse not to change. The one time that Tom tepidly challenges something Brian says, Brian insists that Tom isn’t being serious and then tells Tom what he really thinks. This relational and conversational dynamic reiterates the theme of The Friction Arising from Culture Wars. Tom doesn’t challenge Brian’s beliefs or Brian’s assessment of him because Tom doesn’t want to challenge his own beliefs or character. He prefers to surround himself with people who allow him to believe whatever he wants, no matter how bigoted it might be.

“From time to time I looked at her; I’m sure she did the same to me. She was a very familiar person but the familiarity was out of date, and I didn’t know if it was still good, if it still counted. My general experience of ex-girlfriends is that some part of you is always attracted to them, regardless of what stage of life they’re at or what they look like.”

Tom’s reunion with his ex-girlfriend Jill McGurk reiterates the novel’s exploration of the challenges of Navigating Identity in Middle Age. Tom goes to see Jill in Vegas on a whim and finds himself imagining how a future with her might feel. He finds this imagining comforting because she’s “a very familiar person.” As in his relationship with Brian, Tom finds it easy and comfortable to slip back into an old dynamic with Jill. He doesn’t care that she looks or behaves differently or that her life has changed; he’s more interested in how she makes him feel about himself and how he connects her to his youthful self.

“I could have done without this, I thought, pissing into the pot, trying to avoid the water at the bottom, because the porcelain was quieter. By this I meant the whole thing, other people, puberty, middle age.”

This private moment in the bathroom spurs a rare, concerted reflection for Tom. Alone in the bathroom in the middle of the night, he realizes how uninterested he is in confronting how his life is changing. He’s in a physical state of vulnerability, which puts him in a state of emotional vulnerability. His private confession thus represents Tom’s most authentic beliefs.

“But what else was I supposed to say? When you talk to crazy people, they’re all expert their particular branch of craziness. So you can’t win these arguments, you just have to let them talk. But the whole time I was conscious we were in a student bar, and Todd was not somebody who modulated his voice. I also heard, in the back of my head, Miri saying to me, Angry White Male.”

Tom’s internal monologue during his conversation with Todd Gimmell is a pivotal moment of reflection and change in Tom’s narrative. As he listens to Todd rant about his experiences of supposed discrimination, Tom realizes that he doesn’t want to be like Todd and that this is what Miri meant when she called her father an “angry white male.” Although this reflection is critical, Tom uses derogatory language (“crazy” and “insane”) to refer to Todd, dismissing Todd’s beliefs without reflecting on how and why he has held many of the same beliefs. The passage contributes to the novel’s theme of The Friction Arising from Culture Wars.

“I could see the light from the living room under the door, and later, much later, heard him talking quietly to someone on the phone. It was the…I don’t know how to describe it, the sharpest taste I’d had in years of what it feels like to be young.”

Lying in Michael’s bedroom alone one night, Tom experiences a bout of poignant emotionality and reflection. He’s alone in an unfamiliar place, which puts him in a vulnerable position. Only the door separates him from his son and thus from Michael’s experience and life. The imagery and setting enact Tom’s experience of aging. He feels that he’s separated from a life and temporal realm that he’s reluctant to let go of. Experiencing “what it feels like to be young” in this sensory and physical manner challenges Tom to move beyond his longing and accept his age.

“He asked me if I planned on pursuing that particular line of interest, and I told him, no, that’s all over. I’m not going back to the law school either, I’m done with all that. I don’t want to fight these fights anymore. I need to think of something else to do with the rest of my life.”

Tom’s decision not to work with Todd Gimmell reveals his character’s evolution. In this scene, he’s reflecting on how he told Michael that he isn’t going to take Todd’s case, plans to quit teaching, and is thus determined to change his life. Although these are important steps in Tom’s growth process, he doesn’t mention these decisions again for the remainder of the novel, which renders his character’s transformation dubious.

“I often have cold hands. But when I looked at them, the knuckles were swollen and red. The skin was dry. When I was a kid I remember being fascinated by my grandmother’s hands (my father’s mother), in a horrified way—I didn’t want to eat anything she cooked, I didn’t want her to touch me. This was what my hands were like.”

The imagery in this descriptive passage conveys Tom’s newfound ability to acknowledge his mortality. He compares his “swollen and red” hands to his grandmother’s hands, realizing that his body now resembles another aging body he was once familiar with. In this moment, Tom is finally coming to terms with how his body (and thus his life) is changing.

“Even at her age, she has to deal with male attention and doesn’t want it but can’t help trying to be nice about it. I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe because seeing her again after a week you see her the way she actually looks, like, if you ran into her in the airport lounge you’d think, I hope I sit next to her. I’m not making much sense. I mean, it’s strange to see her like that, without all the other layers.”

Tom and Amy’s reunion complicates Tom’s regard for her. Throughout his time on the road, Tom has actively avoided talking to her because he hasn’t wanted the “real” Amy to disrupt his “imagined” Amy. In this scene, he’s forced to reconcile the competing and concurrent versions of his wife: the person in front of him, the one in his imagination, and the one out in the world interacting with others on her own.