Uncle Timothy's Traviata by Alastair Reid

A year or so before, I had addressed a seminar at Yale University on the wavering line between fact and fiction, using examples from various writers, Borges among them, and from my own work. These pieces were at the center of a curious storm that blew up in the American press during June of 1984. He said these inventions were an attempt to present 'a larger truth, of which facts form a part.' In his book, Whereabouts, Reid counters this article with the following: In 1984, in an interview for The Wall Street Journal, Reid admitted fabricating many details of his reporting from Spain for the New Yorker, including inventing places and ascribing statements to composite characters. In the mid-1950s he travelled to Mallorca, spending some time working as the secretary of Robert Graves.

After the war he studied Classics at the University of St Andrews and briefly taught Classics at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy decoding ciphers.

Reid was born at Whithorn in Galloway, Scotland, the son of a clergyman. During the editorship of William Shawn he wrote for The New Yorker magazine, but his main income was from teaching. He had lived in Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Morocco, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and in the United States.

Although he was known for translations, his own poems had gained notice during his lifetime. He was known for his lighthearted style of poems and for his translations of South American poets Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda. Scottish poet and a scholar of South American literature (1926 – 2014)Īlastair Reid (22 March 1926, in Whithorn – 21 September 2014, in Manhattan) was a Scottish poet and a scholar of South American literature.

Uncle Timothy's Traviata by Alastair Reid