Sometimes reading younger writers on Twitter makes me feel like Nikolai Petrovitch in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. If you haven’t read the novel, Nikolai’s son has returned home from university for the summer—an event Nikolai had been anticipating with great excitement—only to have his son arrive with a friend, a “nihilist” named Bazarov, who knows everything and scoffs at everyone who disagrees with him (particularly at Nikolai’s brother, Pavel Petrovitch, for his outdated way of life). Nikolai’s son, Arkady, like a mindless Twitter follower, loves everything Bazarov says and does.
This leads Nikolai to a hard conclusion that he nevertheless accepts: “‘So that,’ began Pavel Petrovitch, ‘so that’s what our young men of this generation are! They are like that—our successors!’ ‘Our successors!’ repeated Nikolai Petrovitch, with a dejected smile. He had been sitting on thorns, all through the argument, and had done nothing but glance stealthily, with a sore heart, at Arkady. ‘Do you know what I was reminded of, brother? I once had a dispute with our poor mother; she stormed, and wouldn’t listen to me. At last I said to her, “Of course, you can’t understand me; we belong,” I said, “to two different generations.” She was dreadfully offended, while I thought, “There’s no help for it. It’s a bitter pill, but she has to swallow it.” You see, now, our turn has come, and our successors can say to us, “You are not of our generation; swallow your pill.”’”
