The author always sits in the corner of a room but doesn’t understand why. Do some people crave the solace of the corner more than others? He finds clues to the compulsion in his upbringing – and in artIt can take a surprisingly long time to become conscious of something that has been a feature of one’s life for as long as one can remember. I was 66 before I realised that I had always liked sitting in a corner. This revelation occurred in a restaurant while I was waiting for a friend. I’d got there right on time – I’ve known for more than 40 years that I have a mania for punctuality – and after being shown to a corner table I took what was obviously the best of the two seats on offer: the one in the corner. When I was growing up my mum said that if a man was out with a lady he should always walk curb-side; was there a version of this whereby the gentleman should always let the lady have the corner seat and sit with his back to the interior equivalent – the foot traffic – of the open...
Geoff Dyer explores his lifelong preference for sitting in the corner of a room, questioning the reasons behind this satisfaction and whether it's a common desire. He references Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" and the visual representation of corner seating in Irving Ramsey Wiles' painting "The Corner Table" (1886), which depicts a woman in a corner, highlighting the complex feelings of restriction and independence that it inspires.
