Precis for Studs Terkel's Working

In the introduction Studs Terkel states clearly that Working has one common "theme" in all of the accounts and episodes: all of them have within them some sort of violence, whether the violence is physically done against the characters in over-working them, or mentally by continually being put down. This could in a way be seen as the move that Keiji Nakazawa did in Barefoot Gen when he brought up the tidbit about the wheat in the introduction, but maybe not as obvious. It's sort of hard to miss that every single story in Working has in it some sort of violence, but a few other things might be overlooked without further examination; in a lot of ways I think that he's suggesting that this violence is in a way innate in our everyday lives, and to all of us, no matter where we work or what ethnic background we have or who we try to be or what class we're part of.

Although I obviously didn't relate with all of the stories, a few of the stories I was able to connect to really strongly, and for the majority of the others in which I didn't personally relate to, I was still interested in what the person was going to say and how the artist chose to convey their story. It seemed as though the entire book in general was pitched towards an all-inclusive audience of nearly all the people in America. I don't want to extend the audience to the whole entire world because every story was set in America, and whether one-time immigrants or not, all of the characters were "American". In a way it might be going to say that the connection between our working life and the violence we face in it might be part of our society in America and not per-say the way the working life is in other countries; an opposition to this could be said though for the fact that Studs Terkel didn't openly mention life in another country or how working conditions are in other places, so Working could be seen more as a criticism of just our society in and of itself rather than a comparison-type-of-criticism of America's working habits as opposed to other countries'.

I have noticed that others in their precis' went on to write long descriptions of their reading of the text in specific, but in my case I merely wanted to set up with my reading of the general arguments the text presents, and pose some questions that I hope will jump-start our conversation tomorrow....I have some answers of my own to the these questions, but I feel it would defeat the purpose if I just said what I think, so here goes nothing....

What do you guys think the purpose is that Harvey Pekar chose to get different artists for each of the stories? What is he trying to say by sketching each one of the stories in a different way? What was the reason for this stylistic choice in this graphic novel adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working?

Do you think there were forms of work and types of jobs and sorts of people that were not included in Working?

Do you think that there was anything that the people had in common throughout the stories (besides the given that they were all speaking of work, haha)?

In adapting Studs Terkel's Working into a graphic novel, what do you think has changed in the presentation? What has remained the same? Has the work remained true to its goal (the work's argument)? Has newer arguments been created? Has the graphic adaptation taken previous arguments further?