The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Obligation Ruled

It’s tricky to write effective fiction about an entirely alien culture, even if it’s human. Naturally the writer must presume we share a language with his characters. And it helps from a literary point of view that he allows them to use that language fluently and intelligently as their own.

But then the question arises of how to convey the mores of the alien society. These, of course, are so deeply embedded in any society as to be entirely invisible to its members. To be credible, the indigenous narrator cannot refer to them explicitly. They are there in the action but never commented upon. The normal can never even referred to only implied.

This is the trick Crace knows how to perform well: dealing with the normal by never mentioning it explicitly. As in his other novels, the rules of the social game are never stated. Why should they be? They are obvious and a matter of course for all the characters. Their actions and motivations may be enigmatic to the reader. How could it be authentically otherwise?

In the Gift of Stones , the cultural context is a primitive British society which is literally uncivilised but is nevertheless fairly complex. The populace consists of villagers and wandering bands which carry out trade, armed assault and robbery in about equal measure. The economy is not just pre-capitalist and pre-feudal, it is pre-monetary. Every transaction is one of negotiated barter. There is, of course, no legal framework to protect either life or wealth.

But there is a glue that in fact binds folk into a society: obligation. Obligation drives everything in Crace’s narrative. The villagers presume an obligation to work together without discussing it. They presume an obligation to work skilfully to presume their economic niche. Not much to inspire, therefore. If that were the extent of social obligation, the book would be banal.

The interesting cultural twist/observation/comment, however, is the obligation given and received by those with different, somewhat contradictory interests, namely those like the wandering bands. Even in the face of violent threats, the villagers are convinced that the traders will recognise that the villagers well-being is in the interest of the traders. The villagers, after all, are both customers and suppliers. The goose and golden eggs come to mind.

Significantly, obligation overrides everything else. Most importantly, obligation substitutes for emotion. Emotion is transitory and not to be given in to much less trusted. Obligation greases the wheels of social interaction much more efficiently than sentiment. But obligation as the social imperative is dependent on the primitive economy of flint stone and its usefulness in the world.

Like the transition from hunting to agriculture, the transition from stone to metal in human life was undoubtedly traumatic. An unexpected cultural casualty of this transition in Crace’s fiction is the dominance of unforced obligation. Its disappearance as the matrix of society rather than the economic change is the real cause of the trauma. This can only be communicated in stories after the fact. As usual, we only appreciate what we have recently lost.

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