%0 Journal Article
%T Mary Poppins and the Soviet Pilgrimage: P.L.Travers's Moscow Excursion (1934)
%A John McNair
%J PORTAL : Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies
%D 2013
%I 
%X Like the journey it chronicles, Moscow Excursion, P.L.Travers¡¯s account of her 1932 visit to Russia, was in part inspired by the genre it effectively parodies: the ¡®Soviet pilgrimage¡¯ ¡®truth about Russia¡¯ narrative characteristic of the Stalin decades and exemplified (in the Australian context) by Katharine Susannah Prichard¡¯s The Real Russia, also published in 1934. The paper examines the ways in which Travers¡¯s book is written against this genre to produce an avowedly ¡®un-political¡¯ record whose narrator rejects the restrictions of organized travel, and whose idiosyncratic and critical observations on Soviet reality contrast with the admiration of her more orthodox fellow-travellers for the usual showcase institutions on the official itinerary. At the same time, it is argued that in its blend of self-deprecating irony, whimsy and disillusioned idealism Moscow Excursion suggests parallels with Travers¡¯s personal quest for ¡®the truth¡¯ and even with Mary Poppins, published only two months later.
%K travel writing
%K Australian literature
%K USSR
%U http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/2343