Whereabouts: Notes on Being a Foreigner

by Alastair Reid

1990 WHITE PINE PRESS SOFTCOVER

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Essays

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Alastair Reid was a Scottish poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of Latin American literature. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1959 and translated works by Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. Although he was known for translations, his own poems gained notice during his lifetime. He had lived in Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Morocco, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and in the United States.

Among his many books for children are A Balloon for a Blunderbuss, I Keep Changing, and Millionaires (all illustrated by Bob Gill), and Supposing (illustrated by Abe Birnbaum). In 2008 he published two career-spanning collections of work, Inside Out: Selected Poetry and Translations and Outside In: Selected Prose.

Reviews

[Ginebra Lavao Lizcano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alastair Reid managed to beautifully describe what I have been feeling like during the last years of my life. Thanks to my connection to both Spain and Scotland, Whereabouts achieved a level of familiarity that I was in need of lately. It is a book about wanting to belong in a foreign land you've become fascinated with, while keeping a sense of respect for one's motherland. The few chapters vary widely in topic, going from the author's memories during his time in Spain to the analysis of Garcia Marquez's novel. A comforting read.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In one sentence: Long essays on nations and nonbelonging, interspersed with really excellent poems.
To be read when: home too long.


A poet, Hispanicist, translator and long-time New Yorkerer. He was right there when the Latin American lit boom began, giving Neruda crash space in London - and mates with Marquez, insofar as anyone is. I like Reid's prose even better than his excellent poems.

Foreigners are, if you like, curable romantics. The illusion they retain, perhaps left over from their mysterious childhood epiphanies, is that there might somewhere be a place – and a self – instantly recognizable, into which they will be able to sink with a single, timeless, contented sigh. In the curious region between that illusion and the faint terror of being utterly nowhere and anonymous, foreigners live.

I love his scepticism about group identity - the piece on returning "home" to Scotland is great because of his distance from it.

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.
Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences, and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. ‘What a day it is!
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.
And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:
'We’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it!

Galef type:

Theory 1 - models of how a phenomenon works, &
Style 3 - tickle your aesthetic sense in a way that obliquely makes you a more interesting, generative thinker.

[Elizabeth W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unusual memoir, subtly and beautifully woven together anecdotes of a childhood in Scotland, thoughts on translation, his relationships with Borges and Neruda whose work he translated, his love of Spain. A re-read for me. One of the best teachers I had. His thoughts and experiences on being a foreigner, choosing to be a foreigner rather than a tourist, or an exile, or an ex-patriot cleared up my thinking on the differences.

[Trey Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found via reading “Diary of a Bookseller.” Very good memoir. Especially chapter on owning a home in a Spanish village from the 1950s to early 1980s.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Notes on a Spanish Village" brought me back to my time in Spain. Reid describes the effects of Franco's regime on the people of the countryside, who are removed, in multiple ways, from the dominant forces of politics in the country. Reid's friendships with these men and women show the ways he was both accepted as a member of their isolated community and forever recognized as a foreigner--a theme I think about in the context of community work and education.

[Mahjong_kid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this little collection of reflective essays - a perfect book for reading in fits and spurts because of its unhurried, contemplative air. Though I had no prior knowledge of the author, having picked up the volume secondhand on a whim, by the end of the book I felt a passing kinship with him in his travels through the world of forty years ago, wishing that his experiences were still possible in today's world.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Went to Orca books and saw this on the dollar shelf...looks pretty good:)