Christmas cards are going out tomorrow, so better get some content out here pronto.



Here's Laura's summation of last week's reading group:

This month's discussion was about "Fathers and Sons" by Turgenev. We spent a large portion of the time talking about the character of Bazarov, both in terms of some of his specific actions in the book and his larger role as a seminal nihilist character in Russian literature. One specific action of his we discussed was whether his infecting himself at the end was intentional or not...we agreed it was not, although some thought it was sheer carelessness because of a youthful weakness of thinking ahead to the consequences of one's actions and others thought it was more of a casual disregard for everything, including his own life, which he only regrets later when he's suffering the consequences. We also discussed whether his choice to participate in the duel was out of character or whether it made him more real and less of just a "character" and how well he handled the whole duel situation.



Another major discussion point centered around the title of the book - why was it called "Fathers and Sons"? Interestingly, the original Russian title more accurately translates to "Fathers and Children" which served to add even more fuel to that part of the conversation...was it really mostly about fathers and sons or were some of the women in the book key to the themes as well? On an unrelated note, one member observed that he felt that the characters were not entirely complete on their own and only reached true depth as he (the reader) brought his own thoughts and experiences and interpretations to the character. Overall, most people in the group had enjoyed the book, although a few were lukewarm about it (no one actively disliked it).

There's a lot going on in this book, but not much of it is that obvious, Turgenev has a good knack for seeming to stand back from the proceedings and letting events and ideas speak for themselves. The whole nihilism thing as it is espoused by Bazarov seems kind of silly in this day and age, but was quite controversial back then, yet Turgenev neither supports it nor pokes fun at it. According to the sticker on the back of my copy, I read this book around 1986, when I was about the same age as Arkady is in the book. Reading it again now, where I'm more at the father end than the son end, made for an interesting contrast of perspective. Arkady's youthful exuberance is but a memory, and when recently out of college I still knew people like Bazarov who were full of opinions but never did anything about any of them. It's either Nikolai or Pavel who says that sons are like falcons, they fly off for a while and come back only occasionally, where the fathers are like mushrooms, stuck to one place.