Keith Botsford

Biography

Keith Botsford was born in Belgium of an expatriate American father and an Italian mother. His mother (1897–1994) was born Carolina Elena Rangoni-Machiavelli-Publicola-Santacroce, 2nd. daughter of the Marchesa Alda Rangoni. He grew up in a trilingual house, and was educated in English boarding schools. His father returned to the United States early in 1939, and together with his mother and brother, the Botsfords were expelled from Italy on the outbreak of World War II.

Thereafter, Keith Botsford was educated in California, and, after 1941, at Portsmouth Abbey in New England. Keith Botsford was briefly attracted to the monastic life, but then continued his education at Yale University, which he left in 1946 to enlist in the US Army, where he served in counter-intelligence. He finished his formal university education at the University of Iowa (A.B., 1950) and at Yale with a Masters in French Literature (A.M., 1952).

In a long career marked by his varied interests, Botsford then studied composition at the Manhattan School of Music, Japanese at Columbia University, the law at Holborn College in London. He was attracted to music and composed a number of chamber works, a ballet, choral music and part-songs. With John Houseman, he worked in film, theater and television.

Keith Botsford's academic career, often combined with administrative tasks, began at Bard College in 1953, where he met his lifelong friend Saul Bellow. In 1958, after two years in Europe living off translation, Keith Botsford became Asst. to the Rector of the University of Puerto Rico, taught Comparative Literature, founded the Honors Program and directed the University of Puerto Rico's television program.

In 1962, Keith Botsford was invited by his University of Iowa friend, John Hunt, to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Keith Botsford worked with the Congress for Cultural Freedom spending three years in Latin America while based in Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City.

In 1965, Keith moved back to England to become Deputy International Secretary of International P.E.N., where he organized the Bled Round Tables, the first to which Soviet writers were invited.

After serving at P.E.N., Keith Botsford was invited to become the Director of the Ford Foundation’s National Translation Center at the University of Texas, Austin (1965–1970), where he also was Professor of English.

In 1971, Keith Botsford returned to England where he began a twenty-year career as a sports journalist with The Sunday Times. He also became a Feature Writer and columnist on Gastronomy for The Independent, which he joined in its first week. In addition, Keith Botsford was also a features writer and U.S. correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

By the late 1970s, Keith Botsford had combined his journalism with a post as Professor of Journalism and Lecturer in History at Boston University and a position as Asst. to the President John Silber.

Keith Botsford retired as Professor Emeritus, Boston University in 2006. He now lives in Costa Rica in a RIBA Award-winning house on the Caribbean coast designed by his architect son, Gianni Botsford.

Botsford has eight living children and sixteen grandchildren. [reference/source required] He enjoys smoking cigarettes and has been a pipe smoker.

Career

Botsford’s work as a novelist is divided into two periods: the first four novels – The Master Race [1955], The Eighth-best-dressed-Man in the World [1957], Benvenuto [1961] and The March-Man [1964] – were either semi-autobiographical or political in nature; his later books (after he returned to fiction in 1989) include three major autobiographical works: O Brother! [2000], The Mothers [2002], and Death and the Maiden [2007] form a coherent trilogy about his brother, his early wives (and mothers) and, in the last, a reprise of The March-Man, his father. During this second period he also published a series of stories and novellas, described as ‘imaginary biographies’, collected in Out of Nowhere [2000]. At the same time he also wrote five non-fiction books on sporting figures and four crime and espionage novels under the pseudonym I.I. Magdalen.

Recognition

Rockefeller Foundation grant, Moody Foundation grant, American Translators Association prize

Books

Short stories

Articles

"Reflexions on Kennedy," Kolokol: Grafica Panamericana(Mexico), January 25, 1964.

"Mexico Follows a 'Solo Camino'," New York Times, April 26, 1964.

"'There is No Censorship,' Said Poland's Censor: Report From a Surrealist Capital," New York Times, September 11, 1966.

"Why Students in France Go Communist; Elite Proletarians All," New York Times, November 13, 1966.

"If Les Mao Won Their Revolution, They Would Immediately Start Another Maoist Cause Celebre," New York Times, September 17, 1972.

"Look Who's in Bed with Whom: Decision in France," New York Times, March 4, 1973.

"The White Rolls-Royce: Stars Beyond the Firmament," New York Times, March 25, 1973.

"The Music and the Man: Hindemith," New York Times, November 27, 1977.

"A God Who Made Words," New York Times, December 27, 1981.

"The Pollini Sound," New York Times, March 1, 1987.

"Maverick Violinist," New York Times, October 2, 1988.

"Symposium: Who Are the Five Most Underrated and/or Overrated Musicians, and Why?" Boulevard, Fall 2010, Vol. 25, nos. 2 and 3.

Translations

Book introduction

Ceremony in Lone Tree, by Wright Morris. Publisher: Bison Books, September 1, 2001, 304 pages. Introduction by Keith Botsford

Magazines

Bostonia, Poetry New York, Grand Prix International, Yale Poetry Review

Leviathan, Stand, The Warwick Review

Newspaper articles

The Sunday Times of London, The Independent, La Stampa