" and then, as though listening to people unabatedly chattering on about something or other were the task assigned him by the forces of destiny, he returned from the savagery of where he’d been to the solid and orderly ludicrousness of a dinner party. That’s what was left to hold him together—a dinner party. All there was for him to cling to as the entire enterprise of his life continued careering toward destruction—a dinner party. To the candlelit terrace he duteously returned, while bearing within him everything that he could not understand. "

― Philip Roth , American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)