One Of The Most Contentious of the strong opinions presented in J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year must be that of “On paedophilia” (BY, 53–57). While some, perhaps even many, readers may have considerable sympathy for the elderly writer JC’s opinions on torture, the war on terror, and animal rights, Anya — the young woman he has engaged as a secretary (BY, 15) and with whom he has grown “obsessed” (BY, 89) — probably speaks for the skeptical reader when she says that the opinion “On paedophilia” is disturbing and asks why he is writing about it. So why is JC writing about paedophilia, and what is this opinion doing among the larger set of opinions in the book? More broadly, what are we to make of the opinions presented in Diary of a Bad Year? Should we take them seriously, and — a related question — to what extent can we attribute them to the author of the text, the one who signs the text “JMC” (BY, 231)? This complex text raises many questions, but surely that of authority (and “author-ity”), and thereby the status of the various opinions collected in the text, is among the most pressing. Not only is this topic directly addressed, for instance in opinion 30, “On authority in fiction” (BY, 149–51), but it is also evident in the text’s engagement with other authors, their relation to their work, and the effects of that work. Thus, the text engages in these terms with such authors as Harold Pinter (127), Flaubert (e.g., 146), Tolstoy (149–51, 189–90), Kierkegaard (151), García Márquez (192), Antjie Krog (199), Beckett (201), and Dostoevsky (223–27).