Geoff Dyer Meets (and Inspires!) J.M. Coetzee
The downside of conference life is that you’re expected to say something intelligent. I spend most of the sessions constructing sentences in my head and then swallowing them for fear of sounding stupid. There is much talk of birdsong, the nightingale’s in particular
Because I never have any original thoughts, because I don’t have a brain, only a precursor of a Google search engine, I scramble through my mental archives trying to remember relevant quotes…
The reason I was nervous was because JM Coetzee was in the audience. That’s right, he came all the way from Australia to hear me - and to take part in the conference.
