Best seat in the house: writer Geoff Dyer on why sitting in a corner is so satisfying

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 art

It 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 road, with the attendant risk of being assaulted from behind by the chill blast of air conditioning? If so, that bit of chivalry had been invalidated by my friend’s texting to say she was running an incredible seven minutes late.

As soon as I sat down I was happy. Because I was in a corner. Realising is one thing, but I also want to understand. Where does the satisfaction and pleasure of the corner come from? What does it mean? The following reflections are personal and contingent but, as Diane Arbus once said: “I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things.”