I think that I found Ryan Inzana's illustrations of Harvey Pekar's adaptation of Brett Hauser, "Supermarket Box Boy," to be the most compelling linear narrative in Working. It had trace elements of noir which I found to be especially effective as a means of conveying linear time, and I think that, over all, Brett's narrative played still moments and whole illustrated, but immobile, ideas off of segments of progressive time in very interesting ways. Inzana's use of black ink lent the whole vignette a distinctly dark and heavy composition and contributed to this section's noirish feel.

From the very first bit of script, Inzana and Pekar created a sense of movement and of sequencing which mimicked the illustration and mobilized the overall composition. The first text box, "People come to the counter and you put things in bags for them" is followed by "You carry things to their cars" and "It was a grind." These boxes move left to right, top to bottom, and follow the progression the two figures--one Brett, the other the customer--as they make their way through the parking lot. From the very outset, the text (ostensibly belonging to Brett as speaker) follows the movement of the two figures, establishing the progression of time and space as they walk through the parking lot. This scene shifts to another in which Brett lists explains a main complaint of the chapter: "You have to be terribly subservient to people," he says, "'Ma'am, can I take your bags?'" At the bottom of an illustration in which Brett leans over, a grimace on his face he says, "Being subservient made me very resentful." Giving us what is perhaps best described as montage, he elaborates on the characters with whom he comes to interact, saying, "They'd go shopping and hit their kids and talk about those idiots passing out grape petitions" (Terkel 65). All of his language is clipped and short, reemphasizing the noir-like composition of the entire section. As the paid help at the bottom of the social hierarchy, Brett is constructed as a picaresque hero, the anti-hero and the underdog, whose position is seedy at best and whose movement through the structure of his employment is stifled by the very structure itself.

After the first page flip, Brett says, "Everything looks fresh and nice. You're not aware that in the back-room it stinks and there's crates all over the place and the walls are messed up." Language like this, which establishes a sense of temporality by referencing things in spatial relativity (while everything looks nice and fresh, behind the scenes, separated by space and one's access to it, the grocery store is really a stinking, filthy hovel), gives the section a linear feel by revealing what is hidden through a narrative mode that interposes the speaker between the worlds accessible to the average shopper (and average reader) and those which require special access such as that which would be knowable to the box boy or other employees "behind the scenes." Then Brett launches into another anecdote--one which deals explicitly with the sense of separation he feels which is engendered by the dehumanizing conditions of the world of work: "I once met someone a knew years ago. I remembered his name. We talked about this and that. As he left he said, 'It was nice talking to you Brett.' I felt great, he remembered me. Then I looked down at my name-plate. Oh shit. He didn't remember me at all, he just read the name-plate. I wish I put Irving down on my name-plate. If he'd have said, 'Oh yes, Irving, how could I forget you?' I'd have been ready for him. There's nothing personal here" (Terkel 66).

Pekar and Inzana's adaptation and illustrations for Brett's vignette work with language--a language that comes from their subject--that reinforces the sense of isolation and alienation that their subject feels as a member of a work force which thrives through its making use of its subject's inferiority. As such, it must straddle the line between allowing the reader too much awareness of its subject's situatedness and allowing him none. In order allow sympathy between the reader and the subject to manifest, the language and the illustrations must give just enough away for the reader to understand, on some base level, the inequality and humiliation that Brett must face while maintaining the fundamental difference between Brett and his reader. The reader must feel other and separate from Brett in some way for the basic argument (that this job is demeaning and that it functions as a facet of fundamental power differences between customer and box boy) to work on a narrative level.

Page 69 does this incredibly well. Brett and his customer are in the parking lot and Brett is explaining (as the illustrations simultaneously demonstrate) to the reader that he cannot accept tips. The two images juxtaposed on the page--one which shows his customer holding out a quarter as the threshold of her open trunk, the other the very same customer speeding away in her car--create a sense of time, in an action to action juxtaposition. This sequence's closure creates a sense of time lapse in which the customer tips and flees, demonstrating a situation in wich Brett is still powerless to divert or avoid the actions of the customer, whose sense of propriety is invested in her ability to tip the paid help.

-Kyle O