Customer Reviews

Macedonia

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this comic-book 'cos I wanted to see how my country Macedonia was pictured.I was suprised how well did the autor knew the situation in Macedonia and the Balkan.

I'm a fan of serious comics -- Pekar's, Sacco's, Spiegelman's, Satrapi's -- and I had very high hopes for this Piskor/Pekar/Roberson collaboration. My hopes were disappointed. *Macedonia* is a case in which well-meaning people have tried to share an important story but, for lack of artistic vision or time commitment, have failed.

One has to imagine that Roberson, without any experience with the genre, wrote the entire script. Pekar tried to save it, but true salvation would have required a far greater investment of time, completely recasting the script as something far less "talky" and didactic. The book would have grown in length, too, in order to allow similar stories to be told through something other than shot-countershot frames of fillibuster.

To make a success of Macedonia would have required, at the very least, completely reconceptualizing the opening sequence. Page after page, the Heather character essentially lectures her non-responsive boyfriend about her interest in Macedonian politics.

In fairness to Pekar, Roberson's long narrative isn't exactly the "pithy vignettes on life" format for which Pekar is best known. Sure, Pekar wrote at greater length of Robert McNeil (*Unsung Hero*), but that's the exception proving the rule. Moreover, the McNeil project was likely initially conceived as a comic. Though Pekar did encourage Roberson early on to take notes for a possible comic book, she seems not to have approached the concept through the lens of comics.

The book does have its moments, however. Piskor ably presents Balkan history -- clearly the toughest assignment given -- and he moves admirably from those moments, to depicting Eastern European architecture, to Heather and friends dancing at a local disco. It is when Roberson's/Pekar's torrent of conversation finally slows, or when the words can be presented through voice-over, that Piskor finally finds a quite moment to do something more artistically organic.

(Disclaimer: This reviewer has been a consultant in Macedonia on an NGO educational activity associated with the Ohrid Agreement.)

Harvey Pekar's and Heather Roberson's "Macedonia: What does it take to stop a war" is two books in one. One book is about the country Macedonia. I have been there a few times, and since this is a graphic novel, I wanted to see how the country was pictured. The pictures don't misrepresent the nation, but don't capture it either. There are not many iconic images of the capital, Skopje, but the illustrator Ed Piskor has drawn one on the cover. However, if one were in this city square and faced in the opposite direction, one would see the older section of the city with minarets and ruins of a Turkish fort. Interiors--small, run-down apartments, internet cafes, bars--are convincing. But Macedonia is largely rural and mountainous, and those views are missing in this graphic novel which takes place in cities.

The other book in "Macedonia" is an attempt to show how a political arrangement called the Ohrid Agreement decentralized the national bureaucracies and transferred some power to minorities, primarily Albanians, and thereby avoided armed conflict. The main character, Heather, an American student, goes to Macedonia to research how peace, rather than war, can be intentionally implemented. She talks to a lot of people and records her reflections in a portable recorder. Unfortunately, this is where the graphic novel falters. There are a lot of rectangles of people talking. It seems as if one is reading a play without any clever or insightful lines performed under a strobe light. The text can be dense and the visuals unexciting. While the presentation may make some readers struggle, however, the dialog captures the simultaneous doubts and expectations of the Macedonians as they shift from belief in the future Ohrid holds to discomfort about the present adjustments which the Ohrid Agreement demands.

One of the biggest problems with this book is that it is poorly structured as a comic--the narrator, Heather, spends the bulk of the comic lecturing either her boyfriend or the reader. There's space for background, sure, but if so much of the comic is going to be devoted to drawings of the narrator's face alone, why make the book a comic? This is not to say that panels in which we see other people, or actual movement, are much better; the drawings are poor, and the wacky facial expressions and contortions characters go through (surely people do not have joints in the all the places Ed Piskor provides them) are distracting.

I had some doubts, too, about the depth of this book. Although I didn't expect this to be a definitive exploration of Macedonian history, a number of details--that Heather Roberson travels to Macedonia for an undergraduate research project that seems conceived on something of a whim, that she doesn't speak either Macedonian or Albanian, that she is only in the country for a month--made me wonder how this book made it to publication. Surely someone with more experience in the region could have worked on such a book? Instead of an authoritative exploration of Macedonian politics & history, the reader is given a narrator who is often learning things at the same pace as the reader. This could work, but doesn't. The comic's structure, drawings & story all leave a lot to be desired.

If you are looking for Spider-man or Captain America, then move on. Likewise, if your sole intention is to be entertained -- again, move on.

This graphic novel is a window into the quest of a Berkeley student to understand why the situation in Macedonia did not disintegrate into the same chaos that could be found throughout post-Tito Yugoslavia. It is an informative work, but as other reviews have noted, text-rich and not action-oriented.

This sort of work is engaging precisely because it shows the real world interactions of people trying to make sense of the world around them, as opposed to presenting idealized and simple caricatures.

This work fits into the same pantheon of work as Joe Sacco's "Palestine" and "Safe Area: Gorazde", but don't expect to be overly reminded of Sacco's artistic or narrative styles -- the art here is far more subdued, and the focus is on a country where peace has been more or less successful, so obviously the "action" is on a far different level.

This work serves as an excellent introduction to modern Macedonia for the reader with little background on the subject. The caveat is that this graphic novel was not written for the express purpose of entertaining you (although I was entertained), but rather to inform you. If you will resent a comic book that is informative instead of merely entertaining, then this probably is not the graphic novel for you.

In Heather Roberson, Harvey Pekar has found hope for the future. Maybe this will be the first of several episodes leading to Roberson's becoming Secretary of State, or at least US ambassador. She is the perfect protagonist for this Balkan adventure, a midwesterner who knows the difference between averting confrontation and peace, well coached by her UC Berkeley professors she says modestly when someone compliments her insight. She's neither starry-eyed nor cynical, but she's impatient with evasion. And with young men who think she's courting too much danger, a running subtext.

Macedonia avoided the wars that broke out in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, and Roberson wants to know how. To say it's at peace would be a lie. Nevertheless, Roberson, who trusts heavily in the kindness of strangers, likes it there. It's a messy proposition--long-standing ethnic discrimination, a tottering new judicial system, intermittent electricity--but without a lot of preconceived notions, she struggles to listen to everyone she meets from law professors to street artists.

The graphic format works here, telegraphing the annoyances young women alone abroad often experience; giving some idea of how people dress, travel and what they eat; capturing through dialogue the different experiences of Macedonians who cannot leave their country and visiting workers from Europe and the United States. Will this get us into the European Union? seems to be every local's favorite question, so powerful is their urge to leave behind their isolation. Since, as Roberson points out, there's very little literature about modern Macedonia and the story is constantly changing, this book is a valuable "snapshot" of a nation we should support when we talk about "spreading democracy."

Roberson finds kinship with Macedonia's people, who, she says, are direct and caring just like the folks in her native Missouri. And she finds other common ground: they have a gun problem, they are trying to address the effects of years of ethnic discrimination, and there's government corruption.

Something important happened (or failed to happen) in Macedonia in the 1990s. Pekar and Roberson and their illustrator, Ed Piskor, have laid the groundwork for discussion. Let it continue.