Thomas Meaney on the diaries of J.M. Coetzee (now held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin) in the latest LRB:

‘The entries appear in meticulous small script, very rarely crossed out, all neatly dated. They are not the observations of a writer who trusts his instincts, still less his reason. They are more like the carefully sifted, windswept relics of a dried-up saint.’