In the final, aching line of one of the few truly lasting American novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the following words: "and so, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Artists have been warning this country for generations that there is no escaping the past; even if we could, the results would not be healthy for us.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man discovers that history is not marked by linear development but is rather a boomerang that returns to plague the naïve believer in progress. The past comes back in different ways in different times to specifically defy and upend whatever we might believe is the best current thought.

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One of the pleasant surprises of this summer is the release of a chart-topping album from Bob Dylan. At 79, Rough and Rowdy Ways makes him the first artist with a Billboard Top 40 album in every decade since the 1960s and the oldest musician to have led the Artist 100 Chart, surpassing Paul McCartney, who was 76 when he led in September 2018.

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In one of his most perceptive writings, C.S. Lewis says that one of the most common temptations that leads people who are not yet bad to do very bad things is the desire to be part of an inner group — what Lewis calls the inner ring. "Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the moment you enter your profession until you are too old to care," Lewis writes. "If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an 'inner ringer.'"

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In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, America enjoyed a sense of unity that was, if short-lived, a dramatic reminder that we are a single people with a strong and good national spirit.

Like so many of us, I was reminded of that spirit in what so far has been one of the most hopeful and unifying public moments of the American response to the pandemic, former President George W. Bush's recent eloquent and moving plea for unity.

But the reality today is so much different. This time around, we can't seem to put away partisan vituperation during the crisis itself. Our national politics seems as toxic as ever, our divisions more deeply rooted and widespread.

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Right now, so many of us are alone and separated from others that we are rightly thinking about the deleterious effects of isolation.

Indeed, it is no accident that isolation is one of the more serious punishments we inflict upon the incarcerated. In a recent New Yorker article, Robin Wright lays out the physical and psychological damage that prolonged loneliness can have. One of the most telling studies cited by Wright is predicated on neurological experiments of the different impact on our bodies of the presence and absence of physical touch.

Being alone can be, and so often is, painful and damaging.

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