Tom Kromer

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Thomas Michael Kromer (October 20, 1906 – January 10, 1969) was an American writer known for his one novel, Waiting for Nothing, an account of vagrant or hobo life during the 1930s.[1]

Biography[]

Kromer was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, the oldest of five brothers, and he had at least two sisters.[2] His mother was Grace Thornburg, and his father was Michael Albert Kromer, an immigrant from Russia[2] who worked as a coal miner and glass blower. He attended Marshall University for periods in 1925-1929 and did not graduate.[3]

He wrote his novel after five years of living as a hobo, riding trains and traveling across the United States. He spent 15 months in CCC camp in California,[2] but was mostly living as a vagabond.[1] He also published short stories in , founded and edited by Lincoln Steffens, and an unfinished novel about coal mining and glass blowing, Michael Kohler, serialized in American Spectator (literary magazine).

He married Jeannette (Janet) Smith in 1936 while he was being treated for tuberculosis and she for rheumatic heart disease in Albuquerque.[2] They restored an adobe house in Albuquerque, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places.[4] He stopped writing in 1940, became a recluse,[4] and lived as an invalid in Albuquerque. After his wife died in 1960, he returned to Huntington WV where his sisters cared for him. He died in Cabell County, West Virginia in 1969.[5]

Waiting for Nothing[]

Dedicated "to Jolene, who turned off the gas," the work is a realistic account of life as a homeless man during the Great Depression. There is no overarching theme to the novel, which is a collection of anecdotes. Except for a few stories, Kromer said the incidents in the novel were autobiographical.[1]

Straightforward, declarative sentences in the tough-guy argot of the time ("I admire that stiff. He has got the guts. He does not like parting with his dough") are characteristic of Kromer, as are spare descriptions of grim scenes ("When I look at these stiffs by the fire, I am looking at a graveyard. There is hardly room to move between the tombstones. . . . The epitaphs are chiseled in sunken shadows on their cheeks"). The settings include rescue missions, flop houses, abandoned buildings and the sidewalk outside a nice restaurant. In one chapter, the narrator slowly comes to realize that the pitch-black boxcar he is riding in contains another rider, who is quietly, slowly, stalking him.[1]

Waiting for Nothing was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1935, reissued by Hill & Wang in 1968, and, in a definitive edition with most of his other writings, edited by Arthur D. Casciato and James L.W. West III, reprinted as Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings by the University of Georgia Press in 1986.

Reception[]

Reviews praised the book when it was first published. It was reviewed by the New York Times in 1935[6] and 1968.[7] It has been the subject of poetry[8] and has been studied in scholarly journals in 1988,[9] 1990,[10] 1995,[11] [12] 1998[13] and 2019,[14] among others.

Agent[]

Kromer's literary agent was Maxim Lieber,[15] recommended to him by Lincoln Steffens who was the first literary figure to read and praise the manuscript.[2]

External links[]

Full text of Waiting for Nothing

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "A Young Hobo; Waiting for Nothing. By Tom Kromer. 188 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2". The New York Times. March 17, 1935. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Who was Tom Kromer? On the author of Waiting for Nothing – The Neglected Books Page". Neglected Books. 2020-10-05. Retrieved 2021-05-30.
  3. ^ Douglass, Thomas (2015-12-07). "Tom Kromer". www.wvencyclopedia.org. Retrieved 2021-05-30.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (1983). "New Mexico MPS Kromer House". National Archives. National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: New Mexico. Retrieved 2021-05-30.
  5. ^ West Virginia, Deaths Index, 1853-1973.
  6. ^ F.f.k (1935-03-17). "A Young Hobo; WAITING FOR NOTHING. By Tom Kromer. 188 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
  7. ^ Rexroth, Kenneth (1968-04-21). "Stiffs on the Road". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
  8. ^ Runciman, Lex (1985). "Waiting for Nothing: Tom Kromer, American Century Series". Minnesota Review. 25 (1): 18–18. ISSN 2157-4189.
  9. ^ Ditsky, John. "The Depression's "Graveyard Ghosts": A Shared 1990 Motif in Waiting for Nothing and The Grapes of Wrath". Syudies in American Fiction – via Johns Hopkins University.
  10. ^ Crawford, Hugh (1990). "On the Fritz: Tom Kromer's Imaging of the Machine". South Atlantic Review. 55 (2): 101–116. doi:10.2307/3200263. ISSN 0277-335X.
  11. ^ Annas, Pam (1995). "Literature as Window, Literature as Mirror: Working-Class Students Meet Their Own Tradition - ProQuest". Radical Teacher.
  12. ^ Obropta, Mary (1995-01-01). "Kromer's Waiting for Nothing". The Explicator. 53 (2): 111–114. doi:10.1080/00144940.1995.9937244. ISSN 0014-4940.
  13. ^ FREEMAN, ANGELA B. (1998). "The Origins and Fortunes of Negativity: The West Virginia Worlds of Kromer, Pancake, and Benedict". Appalachian Journal. 25 (3): 244–269. ISSN 0090-3779.
  14. ^ Parker, Robert Dale (2019-03-01). "How to Make a Queer: The Erotics of Begging; or, Down and Out in the Great Depression". American Literature. 91 (1): 91–119. doi:10.1215/00029831-7335361. ISSN 0002-9831.
  15. ^ Kromer, Tom (1935). Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings. Knopf (University of Georgia Press). p. 268. ISBN 9780820323688. Retrieved 4 August 2014.
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