As an introduction to 'Stalin's Nose', I will quote the writer's autobiographical quip from the cover: "Rory MacLean trained as a screenwriter. But, during the premiere of his first feature film, his mother fell asleep and his girlfriend ran off with the financier. Not surprisingly, he took a holiday."
Despite his modest inclinations, MacLean is a stellar writer. Stalin's Nose details the author's journey across Eastern Europe in the 1980s with his zany aunt Zita, an elderly aristocrat (with uniformly surprising political pronouncements) looking to revisit places of her glorious past. Also along for the journey is Winston The Pig, a very accomplished pig, although I will not spoil his tale for you. MacLean writes with lyric prose; with words that conjure diaphanous meadows and quiet churchyards. With agile contrast, his portrayal of the Fuhrer's horrors and the concrete solemnity of communism are written with clarity and determination, leaving the reader trapped in the same collision of beauty and misery that Eastern Europe is finally shaking off. Don't worry, Stalin's nose does indeed make a dashing guest appearance in the book.
The Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India by Rory MacLean*
This text practically jumped off the bookshelf and into my basket, sensing my restless wandering feet during an unending, rainy Seattle winter. I expected a lighthearted travel tale full of modern hippies trying to recreate their fore-bearers' overland quest from the edge of Europe to the Himalaya. Instead, I found prose so liquid I got lost in its mercurial glimmer and fell into a book trance that was sadly broken when the last page fell away. MacLean puts a subtle magic into his words which transports the reader to the heat-scathed Turkish shores that tumble into blue oceans, and to opalescent Himalayan peaks where monks' chants fall down around your ears before descending into bottomless valleys. He hauntingly portrays multiple characters along the way; I can still see the green eyes of Penny, one of the original Magic Bus travelers in the 70s, two years after reading this book. Maybe the words of this text are written in LSD-imbued ink for the dazzling visions MacLean gives to his readers.
*This is my favorite Rory Maclean book
Under the Dragon: A Journey through Burma
Maclean, shaken by a brief visit to Burma long ago, returns to the country to travel by rail and collect stories of "ordinary" Burmese. The vignettes portray a government censor for the regime, a humble basket weaver, a woman in the tangles of a complex love affair, a freedom fighter, and others. I have been yearning to see Burma for years, but it has always been just out of reach, always in the throes of another bloody repressive episode when I've tried to visit from neighboring Thailand. The country is an enigma of violent government opression in a land of Buddhist monks, who physically radiate the lighthearted holiness of their faith. Naturally, I fell for this glowing collection of Burmese portraits.
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