“The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Margaret St. Clair

My first, briefer response (and with a slightly different perspective) I recorded here.

Written under the pen name of Idris Seabright, it first appeared in F&SF and was reprinted in a few major retrospectives by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Martin H. Greenberg, David G. Hartwell and Robert Silverberg.

Summary

A salesman, new at his trade, having just finished reading his manual (the narrator warns us that he fails to pay attention to the sales rule concerning “tact and keen power of observation”), goes to sell rope to gnoles, a people who live at the end of Terra Cognita. The senior gnole, with multifaceted jewels for eyes, indicates that he doesn’t understand spoken languages, so through pantomime, they make a promising agreement about a purchase.

Commentary with Spoilers

In the nineties, SFWA writers considered this one of the top thirty fantasy stories in a fifty-odd year period. Hartwell included it as a “masterpiece” (according to the title of his collection). Who am I to disagree? I will say I’d recommend swapping this with “Brenda” [see discussion in this review. Page to second story. Whenever my mind reels back to this story, all of her other works pale--wonderful character, wonderful speculation, and a thoughtful piece].

It’s a simple classic story of cultural misunderstanding. It isn’t greed that is our salesman’s fatal flaw, but simple ignorance. In fact, "tact and keen power of observation" is a bit of distraction, as if he'd failed what we see, but we only see it because the narrator tells us (the narrator, after all, stated that that "may be" the salesman's problem).

He turns down a too-valuable jewel for trade in order to go for two smaller jewels which happen to be the gnole’s alternate pair of eyes, which offends the creature enough to tie up, fatten and slaughter the salesman without torture to be eaten. Was the story selected as one of the best because the victim was a salesman? Or simply for the cultural faux pas so easy for anyone to make?

Martin Greenberg pointed out the correlation between this story and St. Clair’s former occupation in horticulture. Under that lens, this story makes an interesting comparison to her tale “The Gardener” (which is superior in execution if not speculation--I discussed it in this review. Page down) but remains one of her best works, especially at such length, capturing a culture with compact dexterity.