Turgenev was advancing, novelistically, a line of thought that runs through all his work. Beliefs are admirable, strong beliefs perhaps even more so. But there is a point at which belief can tip over into fanaticism. Turgenev had seen this with Belinsky, and in Bazarov he re-created and dramatized it. Bazarov loves nature but turns it into a science project, loves Odintsova but feels bad about it, and loves his parents but refuses to indulge this affection by spending time with them. All of this, from Turgenev’s perspective, is a mistake. It’s well and good, in other words, to talk about the existence of God and the future of the revolution, but you need to take a break for lunch.... When I first read “Fathers and Sons,” I was in college; all I cared about were the sons, their willingness (in Bazarov’s case) to die for their beliefs, their certainty. Reading the book again, twenty-five years later, I found myself rooting for the fathers. What might they do to bridge the divide? And why were their sons so mean to them, after all the fathers had done? Sure, they weren’t perfect, but they were doing their best!

That, of course, I see now, is what the book is about. This rupture between parents and their children is what happens, over and over, with every new generation; there is nothing for it, no remedy, no answer. Who is right in “Fathers and Sons”: the fathers or the sons? They’re both right, and they’re both wrong, and neither will ever understand the other.