I’m a horrible gift-giver. I’m the person who gave you a gift certificate on your birthday, didn’t realize you’d expect a gift on our anniversary, and cooked “Christmas dinner” in lieu of a wrapped present. In short, you shouldn’t expect much from me.

When I do take the time and energy to purchase a thoughtful gift, it’s often a book. I have a few rules for gifting books. First, I never repeat books. I won’t give someone a book I’ve given someone else. Second, I never gift a book for no reason. Even if I can’t explain my reasoning to myself, the book has to feel right for this particular person in order for me to purchase it and hand it over. Third, I never explain my choice of book to the giftee.

My latest failed romantic interest was bewildered by my choice to simultaneously end our relationship and give him a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

“If life is insignificant, and decisions don’t matter,” he started when he confronted me about it a few hours later, probably after looking up the plotline on Wikipedia.

“It’s just a book,” I said. “Forget about it. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Of course I meant something. The Unbearable Lightness of Being posits the idea that since everything occurs only once, existence loses its weight. “For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine,” Kundera writes. The moral ambiguity behind this statement drives the novel.

Kundera follows the story of Tomas, an incorrigible womanizer, and his wife Tereza, plagued by jealousy and the inability to leave him;  he also follows Sabina, a woman defined by her love for betrayal and lack of loyalty, and Franz, the man who left his wife in order to be with her. Through his exploration of these complex relationships, Kundera portrays each character for what they are–even Tomas’ philosophy of infidelity is sympathetically analyzed and explained. The characters are examined under a microscope by readers who are encouraged by the author to view them without conventional judgment.

I read this book over the summer of 2010 on the metro in Washington, DC, a few pages every day whether I was seated in an empty train or struggling for a sense of personal space in a crowd. Though it was a slow read, it was a good one; the lack of consequences of my minute actions weighed on me on the way to a party or a networking event or a friend’s house. It only happens once. What a beautiful, freeing thought.

I don’t think I’ll ever have to explain myself to him. He may have read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, resentfully reading into every word. On the other hand, he might have never had the nerve to read it. The copy I gave him could be sitting in his bookcase, in his suitcase, or in the trash. He might have forgotten all about it. And that’d be for the best. None of it mattered, and thus it all mattered.

Anyway, it could have been worse. I could have given him a book of poetry. Wonder what he would have made of that?

Tweet

Related Posts

• Lydia Melby: The Last Book I Loved, The Cat’s Table
• Molly McArdle: The Last Book I Loved, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Sarah Simpson: The Last Book I Loved, The Subterraneans
• Rimas Uzgiris: The Last Book of Poetry I Loved, The Living Fire
• Molly O’Brien: The Last Book I Loved, White Teeth