Rory McLean

Creating a Traveler’s Tale

McLean kõneleb oma loomingust, milleks ta on materjali kogunud 18 aasta vältel sooritatud rännakutel.

Rory MacLean sündis ja sai hariduse Kanadas. Töötas filmi alal, kuid 1989. aastal, olles võitnud ajalehe „The Independent“ reisikirjanduse võistluse, hakkas ta tegelema proosaga. 

Esimene reisiraamat „Stalini nina, rännak läbi Euroopa“ kirjeldab Ida-Euroopat kohe pärast Berliini müüri langemist. Raamatust sai Suurbritannias bestseller. 

Teine raamat räägib Šotimaalt Kanadasse rännanud immigrantide unistustest. 

Ta on kirjutanud ka Birmast kümme aastat pärast Birma ülestõusu 1988. aastal ja hipide teekonnast Istanbulist Indiasse, mille jooksul ta kohtus inimestega, kes olid teekonnast osa võtnud või sellest osa saanud. 

Kõige uuem teos „Kadunud inimesed“ räägib nendest inimestest, kes jäid kadunuks Jugoslaavia sõdade tagajärjel. MacLean on võitnud arvukalt auhindu, ta on Suurbritannia Kuningliku Kirjandusseltsi liige ja ta teeb regulaarselt kaastööd BBC-le. Praegu elab Rory Berliinis ja Suurbritannias.

About the History of Travel Writing

Travel writes go to the end of the world bringing back this Holy Grail – the original knowledge. From the middle ages it has been heroic attempt to confront the world and understand it. 20^th century changed all – there are now guidebooks about every place on the Globe, 20% of wilderness travelers check their e-mails during the first week away from home. This creates a problem – what remains to be discovered? There are still physical dangers possible; others observe the passages of time, focusing on societies and transitions.  “Travel is dead and world is a suburb”. Wrong! There are still prude differences in everything that is important. The trail hasn’t gone cold, only its route has changed, and with that, of course, the role of a travel writer.  

Today, there are no wonders to discover. Only unexpected places, often, close to the writes home, studying e.g clouds and waves. Travel writers have always been one culture explaining to another rather than one individual reporting to another.

There First Book

Where to start a journey? Rory tells about his first time “to do Europe” as a teenager from liberal multicultural society. He saw the Berlin Wall and wondered how such territorial absurd could happen. He couldn’t understand the motivation of people who looked so ordinary on surface. Out of that memory, about 15 years later, came the first book “Stalin’s Nose”. Where, after the fall of the Wall, is the real end of Europe now? (A question that pops up in Estonia today quite often, TS) travelling in 1989 for a few month behind the fallen Wall were travel not geographically but also through peoples’ stories who opened their hearts for the first time to a westerners. (For me it has always been fascinating, is still, how westerners see our culture and history through their eyes of fear, horror stories, no humanity applied to our lives before “deliberation” time and how they feel for our history from their point of view; Rory is telling about “us” as people, who have grown blind worshiping distant tyrant. This western superiority is amusing to me, TS). 

The second book begins 200 years before the author’s birth with his great-grandfather’s emigration from Scotland. Rory is the main character of the book as his great-grandfather.

Burma is the core of the next book (Under the Dragon, 1997) that opens author’s feelings about injustices, brutalization, and mass violation of human race.  It is a story of four women.

The next book is a journey (Magic Bus, 2005) that Rory took on the routes of white hippies of 1960s who headed east from Istanbul to Kathmandu. This was a wave once that changed the way we travel the World. The characters of the book are closely modeled by their originals.

“The point of life is that it stops” Kafka. The myth of Icarus, living in a Greek village ten years ago and the role of ancient in modern lives started a new book. Living through the death of his mother changed Rory’s perspectives to certainty, or rather lack of it. He wanted to fly. He found a village where to build an airplane, which is a symbol of dreams.

Journey is a convenient metaphor for life. How did Rory’s journey begin? By acknowledging his one and only life, by deciding to mark that life, by recording an individual view - this is how I see the World. 

There is much wonder in that.