Tom Kromer

Thomas Michael Kromer was born Huntington, West Virginia from a family of Czech immigrants, firstborn of five brothers. He attended to Marshall College (now University) but with the 1929's Great Depression he begun to live like a hobo through the States for five years. He published the account of this experience in his only book Waiting for nothing.

The book is a 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.

Straightforward, declarative sentences in the tough-guy argot of the time are characteristic of Kromer, as are spare descriptions of grim scenes. 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.

After the publication in 1935 he tried several times to write another book but the project never materialized. He married in 1936, and stopped his writing carrer by 1940, in this period he also contracted tubercolosis. After he spent some years in Albuquerque, he returned to his hometown where he died on 10th January 1969, it has been speculated by suicide.