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December 30, 2023
- Varvara Myagkova
A forgotten writer: Tom Kromer. (1906-1969)
Kromer was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia. He wrote his novel after five years of living as a hobo, riding trains and traveling across the United States. He was mostly living as a vagabond and died in Cabell Country, West Virginia.
His only novel “Waiting for nothing”
(source: Facsimildustjackets.com)
first published in 1935, is a sobering, first-hand account of the author’s life as a homeless man during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The book, a classic portrayal of the brutality and inhumanness of the time, was written while the author was working at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in California, and was his only completed novel. Waiting for Nothing describes Kromer’s travels on the rails, his encounters with small-time crooks, prostitutes and homosexuals, and the endless search for enough food to eat and a warm place to sleep. Throughout the book, Kromer describes the plight of a vast army of unemployed workers, left to fend for themselves in a largely uncaring society.
A powerful example of a piece of literature, which highlights the plight of the ordinary man in a time of severe crisis. Very contemporary in many ways, given the blazing inequalities in today’s US, where 5% own more than the 90% of the lower end of the population, and we are still told by the neoliberal brigade this is the only way of running a free society. (Where big corporations reign, avoiding taxes, privatising profits and socialising losses, paying often non living wages and with it all health insurance being a luxury many cannot afford…)