I N THE third Tanner Lecture, Coetzee's protagonist, novelist
Elizabeth Costello, debates the issue of animal rights with philos-
ophy professor Thomas O'Hearne. According to O'Hearne,
“Thomas Aquinas says that friendship between human beings
and animals is impossible, and I tend to agree. You can be friends
neither with a Martian nor with a bat, for the simple reason that
you have too little in common with them.” Although Costello
challenges many of O'Hearne's other statements, on this one, so
easily refuted, she remains mysteriously silent. Yet the failure of
Costello—and of Coetzee's other characters—to address Aqui-
nas's claim is not so surprising when we realize that in a story that
is, ostensibly, ¹ about our relations with members of other species,
none of the characters ever mentions a personal encounter with
an animal. The closest we come to the possibility of such encoun-
ters is when Costello's son says to himself, “If she wants to open
her heart to animals, why can't she stay home and open it to her
cats?” Thus we discover only secondhand that Elizabeth Costello
lives with animals. At no point in her passionate comments on
animal rights does she mention the beings who, in all probability
(given that she is an old woman who lives alone, far from her son)

I thank Peter M. Sherman and Steve Lansing for valuable feedback.

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