Vignettes #47

Often it is quite a task to find an accurate gift for someone. My idea was always to give something that I would treasure very much myself. Since I love books I usually give my friends and relatives a book.

My mother has come to cherish this kind of gift. Since she is not too well informed about literature and the major authors, each gift she receives from me is some kind of recommendation; there should be a certain relevance to what she's getting. So it should be an author she might here about in the news or a book which maybe is the talk of the day and some of her friends might have it read it, too.

This doesn't make it easier to find the right title, because it is often just a coincidence that she'd hear about the book elsewhere. Therefore her joy about the book is also combined with a certain amount of scepticism: why did I get this particular title and what is its relevance?

1988 was my greatest success: I had bought her Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, an American she had never heard of before and none of her friends did either. So at first it was just an obscure gift, but she did read it. A few months later Toni Morrison received the Nobel prize, and my mother was better informed about who the author was before anyone else did. And she admired my foresight...