The Animals In That Country

A 2020 novel by Laura Jean McKay. It’s in the voice of Jean, a middle-aged woman who works at a wildlife park in Australia. A zoonotic pandemic enables people to communicate with other species.

What’s really interesting about this is that when we see what the animals say (set out in a different font, as poetry), it’s very hard to understand. It’s the first time I’ve understood what Wittgenstein meant by his ‘If a lion could speak, we could not understand him’: I mean it’s in English, right? But the world of the other species has such different concepts and conventions that even when ‘Englished’ it’s often unfathomable. I found this frustrating when reading the novel, as (I guess) I’d been looking forward to seeing what animals actually thought, forgetting first that it’s a novel and second Wittgenstein’s warning.

The sample below manages to include the utterances of several (labelled) species – which is rare, as the vast majority of animal-talk is Sue the dingo): dog (the dingo Sue); bugs (they are terrifying); and ‘night birds’.

The Normal Heart

A 1985 play by Larry Kramer, written – before either of the terms ‘HIV’ or ‘AIDS’ had been coined – as a wake-up call to the world about the new disease killing gay men in New York. The production was at the ADC in Cambridge, directed by {disclaimer} our nephew Alex Velody.

How they are related

The obvious connection is the arrival of surprising new diseases which turn everything upside-down. Both situations are also about the failure of communication, due to a dominant group’s writing off of the less powerful one (humans: animals; straights: gays). The trajectories differ, however, as humans manage to shut off the animal chatter, but the voices of gay men are not cut off, but get more and more mainstream.