Waiting For Nothing

by Tom Kromer

This autobiographical novel, which has been out of print for many years, was originally published in 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression. It tells the story of a young man, typical of thousands in the thirties, who is out of work and down on his luck in New York City. His life is a struggle for simple survival - how to find food, how to find shelter for the night. The preoccupation with staying alive in a seemingly indifferent world - days spent looking for handouts, nights spent in flophouses, missions, and jails - leads inevitably to humiliation, despair and spiritual defeat. Waiting for Nothing is a compelling human document - like Henry Roth's Call It Sleep and Jack Conroy's The Disinherited - which comes out of harsh, direct, personal experience, the experience of a decade in which the nation was nearly overcome by a sense of hopelessness and fear.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Noir, American, Novels

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Escrito durante la "Gran Depresión", este libro es una dura crítica a la sociedad americana de los años 30. Ataca también a la religión cristiana y todo el falso entramado solidario de sus albergues: comida en mal estado, instalaciones deprimentes, trabajadores hipócritas.
La policía tampoco queda impune.
Está escrito en forma de relatos con un hilo argumental constante: las vivencias de los vagabundos.
Es una novela llena de miseria, muerte y tristeza, aunque no exenta de cierta esperanza. Eso sí, hay que excavar muy hondo para encontrarla.
Narrado en un lenguaje "intencionadamente" plano, el lenguaje del vagabundo.

Written during the "Great Depression," this book is a harsh critique of American society in the 1930s. It also attacks the Christian religion and all the false solidarity of its shelters: food in poor condition, depressing facilities, hypocritical workers.
The police are not unconcerned either.
It is written in the form of stories with a constant plot thread: the experiences of the vagabonds.
It is a novel full of misery, death and sadness, although not without some hope. But you have to dig deep to find it.
Narrated in a language "intentionally" flat, the language of the vagabond.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what it was like: out on the street begging for small change in the rain, then “flopping” (i.e. sleeping) in a louse-infested dormitory alongside bay-rum and “derail” drinkers. Or crammed into the local Mission-house with a couple of hundred other “stiffs”, enduring the sermon only because it’s warm inside and perishing cold outside. Or in a derelict building at two in the morning being woken by flashlights and the boots of cops who are, to be frank, just uniformed thugs. Finding imaginative ways of panhandling a few coins. Riding the rails, the boxcars of freight trains, from one bleak town to another.
    It’s the 1930s of course, there’s mass-unemployment all across Depression-era America, and no work of even the most basic, menial or temporary kind to be had anywhere. It’s also winter, freezing, and people are reduced to begging for pennies to scrape enough together for a hot meal. Alternatively there’s the silent humiliation of standing in a block-long soup-line for hours on end, to be given “a bucket of slop and a stale loaf” (even the soup is almost inedible: rancid carrot-soup made from rotting carrots). It’s not just single men either; there are women out here too, women with children, with babies even, babies starving for want of milk—whole families living this real-life Hell.
    Tom Kromer was born in 1906 in West Virginia. After a conventional-enough early life (college, then a spell teaching) in late 1928 he was commissioned by a newspaper (the Huntingdon Herald-Despatch) to give its readers a taste of the Great Depression, then in its early stages, by going out on to the streets begging. A few months after the article was printed, suddenly finding himself out of a job (and money), he jumped a freight-train and went back out there for real this time. Five years later Waiting for Nothing (published 1935) was an account of his experiences. It’s not a story, but a series of scenes—which he claimed to be mostly autobiographical—describing life at the bottom, life “on the fritz” (= on the road, broke and out of work). The style is as plain as it gets, absolutely no frills at all, and with much 1930s slang: “I have seen one bull kick a hundred stiffs off a drag” (= I have seen one bastard of a blackjack-wielding cop single-handedly kick a hundred cowed, hungry, unemployed men off a train). The result is stark, almost as if written in black-and-white. I think you could put it alongside Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and George Orwell’s Down and Out…, but this is more like the former than the latter—here people often go days at a time without food or shelter of any kind.
    Although the book itself was a success, Kromer never completed another and, in the end, gave up writing altogether—I think maybe he’d put all he had to give into this one. The impression I also get is that Waiting for Nothing has been neglected, overlooked in recent decades, which is a pity. Above all, it brought home to me that the overwhelming majority of the people on its pages weren’t feckless or lazy, stupid or useless; they were people like you and me: average, ordinary, but just unbelievably unlucky to be living in the wrong place at absolutely, catastrophically, the wrong time. It could have been any of us.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book must have had an enormous influence on me. I started reading it on July 3, 1973 and finished on July 4. Those same two days, I sat down and wrote the first chapter of my novel, Famous Potatoes. I revised many parts of that novel over the course of writing it, but the first chapter never changed. Not suggesting that if you read this book, you too will start writing a novel. But that's what happened to me.

It's gritty and real. I love it.

I look over at this stiff's empty bunk. Dead in an hour. I shiver. Great Christ, I think, is this the way I will go out, too? It is hard enough to pass out in a nice feather bed with all your family gathered around and crying. It is no snap to die like that. But this way. Lying up on top of a three-decker bunk. No mattress under you. Only a dirty blanket. Lie here and rattle and groan. Lie here and feel the lice crawling all over you and under you. Lie here with only the whites of your eyes gleaming through the dark. To feel the bones sticking out of your skin. It will get me, too, like it got this guy. It is getting me. I can feel it. Twenty years before my time I will be like this guy. Maybe it will be in a mission like this, and they will come and carry me out on a stretcher. Maybe I will be lying in the corner of a box car with the roar of the wheels underneath me. Maybe it will come quick while I am shivering in a soup-line, a soup-line that stretches for a block and never starts moving. I lie up here on my three-decker bunk and shiver. I am not cold. I am afraid. What is a man to do? I know well enough what he can do. All he can do is to try to keep his belly full of enough slop so that he won't rattle when he breathes. All he can do is to try and find himself a lousy flop at night. Day after day, week after week, year after year, always the same—three hots and a flop.

[Diego González · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta es una novela autobiográfica en la que un vagabundo, hijo de la Gran Depresión, las pasa putas por todo Estados Unidos, durmiendo en parques y albergues desbordados de piojos, comiendo la basura menos podrida de los cubos y viajando en trenes de carga. Todo eso es soportable para el protagonista. Lo que no es soportable es cómo le trata la gente, especialmente los policías, como si su pobreza fuera culpa suya, por vago, por maleante, por no querer trabajar. Nuestro vagabundo es golpeado, agredido, encarcelado y machacado una y otra vez por otros seres humanos, algunos de ellos con el pecho lleno de amor de Dios. En realidad, uno espera más o menos eso de la novela. Eran los años 30.

Lo que uno no espera es levantar los ojos del libro y entrever en el telediario exactamente las mismas escenas de violencia contra los que padecen las fuerzas de la historia en sus carnes, sólo que en la tele los que reciben los golpes no son vagabundos, sino refugiados, y el escenario no es Estados Unidos, sino las fronteras europeas. Estamos que nos salimos.

[Repix Pix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breve, seco y desgarrador.

[Nancy]

Charlie Plymell recommended this to David Wojnarowicz in 1978. It looked sufficiently intriguing, and bleak, so I grabbed a copy on Amazon for 99 cents.

[Paco Serrano · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ejércitos de hombres, millones de hombres, recorren el país de norte a sur y de este a oeste en 1934. Cuando 200 hombres se suben a un tren en una dirección, otros 200 se suben a otro en la dirección contraria. ¿Pero acaso importa la maldita dirección en la que vayan? No hay trabajo, y sin dinero no hay comida en ningún sitio, por más que les llegue el hedor putrefacto de todos los alimentos que se pueden en los silos, los almacenes y los graneros".

Tom Kromer fue uno de los miles de vagabundos que proliferaron por las calles en EEUU durante la Gran Depresión. Estando en los albergues y parques donde pasaba las noches, escribió algunas notas que terminaron por convertirse en esta dura y cruda novela autobiográfica.

[Moreninha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me ha impresionado vivamente. Una especie de colección de vivencias de un hombre que sobrevive a duras penas durante la Gran Depresión. No hay una continuidad narrativa, cada capítulo, si bien retoma frases y detalles de los anteriores (la presencia de los trenes, el episodio del atraco), no sigue un hilo. Me ha parecido un efecto deliberado: el autor nos narra una vida que, por su propia esencia, no tiene una continuidad o un sentido, más allá de no morirse de hambre HOY. Tengo la sensación de que lo usa como metáfora extendida de la vida del protagonista, una especie de conjunto de pesadillas deshilvanadas. La elección del lenguaje es acertadísima, transmite perfectamente la angustia, la impotencia, la frustración absoluta, la sensación de habitar una existencia que podría ser perfectamente una película de terror.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read it, as this was my great-uncle. A nice short read (I read it in one afternoon), but well-crafted too.

[Mike DeRuyter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was unbelievably stark and depressing. I recommend it to everyone. It's very good. The author debases himself to incredible lows and nearly meets a horrific end more than once. The style is completely unvarnished, which I greatly liked. A superb book.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A raw, no frills 1935, semi autobiographical account of being down and out during the depression. Highly praised by the likes of Raymond Chandler, but then largely forgotten the rest of the century, Kromer wrote little — traumatized, both physically and mentally by his experiences — but enough to become an influence on writers like Breece D’J Pancake. Short, and worth a read — this book is a very example of a hyper noirish neo-realism

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce roman autobiographique se passe pendant la grande dépression aux États Unis. Écrit dans un argot cru, il dépeint le quotidien des "stiff" qui essayent de survivre. Ces hommes et ces femmes, victimes d'un système capitaliste méprisant qui puni ceux qui n'ont pas de travail (alors que de toute façon il n'y a aucun emploi à pourvoir), sont prêts à tout pour trouver à manger et un endroit sec pour dormir (jusqu'au dégoût de soi-même).
C'est brutal, à vous en donner des sueurs froides.
C'est fou de voir comment une crise détruit des vies humaines, alors qu'il y a clairement à manger pour tout le monde mais si tu ne fais pas partie de la bonne classe sociale tu peux crever dehors et on te plaindra même pas, on dira même que c'est de ta faute. La scène du début avec le restaurant qui sert du poulet est hallucinante notamment. C'est la force de ce texte, c'est un vrai témoignage de ce qu'il s'est passé lors de la grande dépression mais aussi de ce qui se passe toujours lorsque l'on parle de l'argent et des inégalités qu'il crée.

Pour une fois je recommande la lecture de la préface qui prend le temps de présenter le traducteur et son travail sur le texte.

[Eva Mar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué barbaridad. Ha sido estremecedor leer a Tom Kromer, me ha hecho crac algo por dentro. Describe cosas que al leerlas se ven y producen horror, parecen salidas de una pesadilla por su dureza, pero están empañadas de realidad. La supervivencia llevada al límite. No olvidaré esta experiencia lectora tan desgarradora, se ha colado en mi alma y no encuentra el camino de regreso.

[Becky Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this autobiographical novel, Kromer describes what it was like to be on the fritz in 1930's America. He looks for work, rides the freight trains, sleeps in missions, panhandles, and struggles to survive. The language is straight from the time period and very evocative.

I would love to be in a discussion group talking about his novel.

[Charles Low · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harrowing but somehow engrossing story of "a stiff" living through the great depression on the streets and on the run. There was not one page that was beautiful but it was very detailed for a short read. Would recommend with the caveat that it's not going to cheer you up.

[Reychango Huelepetricor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desgarradoras historias de víctimas de La Gran Depresión. Vagabundos sobreviviendo a duras penas, refugiándose en sitios deplorables y comiendo lo que no le incaria el diente ni un animal.

[Adrián Ciutat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un simulador virtual realmente conseguido sobre ser un vagabundo.

[Maryanne Southgate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 1973 because a friend of mine had to read it for a history class in college. I am glad I did. It is a good look at someone's life during The Great Depression!

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Jack Mckeever · Rating 4 out of 5]

For their debut publication, Brian Hamill's excellent Glasgow-based imprint The Common Breath have revised a 'lost classic' from 1930's Depression America. Originally published in 1935 and the only ever completed novel by Tom Kromer, 'Waiting For Nothing' is a crushing, often impossibly bleak view of life during the Great Depression from the gutter itself. There's no class fetishization here; none of F. Scott Fitzgerald's upper-class imaginings. This is the story of a man who can barely eat, told by a man experiencing that same reality.

As a document of a particular mindset in a specific circumstance, this book has plenty of value. The grit and grimness that leads to imagined violence, mishandled acts of pure desperation and repetitive defeatism - phrases like 'no one cares if I live or die', and other more damning prejudices that are still imposed on the have-nots in both modern American and British society - show just how othering this experience was. Written in an observational dialect, this is Kromer depicting these people as they really were, and how he really interacted with them.

And like Cormac McCarthy, he managed to mine dark, prophetic beauty out of a deceptively simple turn of phrase. 'You don't stay young in a soup-line', for example, or: 'A dead man's grin is a terrible thing. A mocking, shivery thing'.

There is one aspect of the novel that makes me uncomfortable on another level though. Chapter 4 is littered with homophobic utterances from our protagonist. The least offensive is the repetition of the term 'queers', but at its worst it's pretty nihilistic; he tells us that going home with a 'queer' in order to get himself a meal makes him feel 'ashamed' and 'sick in the stomach'. This would be less alarming if the novel wasn't at all autobiographical and Kromer was depicting this character as a villain. But he's not, and there's no clear distinction between Kromer's voice and this character's.

Now, given the time of the novel's original publication, this language and mindset is hardly surprising. And one could argue that it doesn't delineate the value of the novel in other ways. Just because there is misogyny in Shakespeare plays, it doesn't mean we can't learn anything else from them.

But here's the thing; when we talk about Shakespeare now, misogyny is usually part of the discussion, and nobody celebrates it. In the case of 'Waiting for Nothing', I'd have appreciated something in Duncan Maclean's introduction that recognises the problematic nature of this language, especially as he touches on other ways it parallels our current reality in 2020. Instead, the homophobia is ignored - as it is in all other literary coverage I've seen of this novel thus far - and that to me feels odd.

'Waiting For Nothing' is certainly an important documentation of the reality of people living in true, corrosive and tragic desperation. It's gripping and often moving, and whilst it certainly holds up a mirror to today's society, it's very much a product of its time.

[Kiril · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of personal anecdotes from the author's time as one of a million homeless during the Great Depression. Extremely dark, at times frightening, occasionally uplifting - if sometimes only for its reflection of the endurance of the human spirit. One only wishes no one would have had to go through any of the things in this book in order to display that endurance.

I'm surprised the book isn't better known. It's a short read, in short, direct sentences that brutally get their point across, with some very vivid (sometimes quite beautiful!) imagery and metaphors occasionally appearing out of the gloom - anyone could read it, and if more people did, maybe we'd have fewer debates about social programs for the houseless. Wish I'd read it when my professor assigned it in college, rather than now, years later.

I don't think the book is perfect - sometimes the language feels slightly more repetitive than it needs to be (though I understand it's part of the style, to some extent), and two stories ended with the same sentence, word for word. I'd give it closer to 4.5 than 5 stars, but there are so many remarkable stories. There's no denying its force as a document of its time, written after five years of homelessness. I can't find too much about Kromer's later life but I sincerely hope he had some happier days.

[John Tipper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel has an unusual structure; Tom Kromer, the author, is the main character, and it's written in the first person, present tense. The writing style is minimalist, stripped down. The novel had an influence on writers such as Breece Pancake and Pinckney Benedict. It delves into people in the throes of the Great Depression, looking for work or just a handout or a meal. Kromer is a man from Appalachia trying to cope with homelessness on the streets of big cities in the 1930s. He's thrown in jail for vagrancy and has to deal with an aggressive gay man. He's sentenced to do labor. When he goes to a church mission for food and shelter, he witnesses a well-dressed, out of work man commit suicide with a gun. Kromer is shocked. And after hopping on a train and trying to sleep in boxcar, a hobo with a knife sets upon him. There's a nasty fight. Kromer is cut badly on an arm. He knocks out the rail runner. The themes examined here are poverty, social injustice, and the struggles of marginalized people. The purpose of the novel appear to be to show the great divide between the haves and have-nots. Reviewers have compared Waiting for Nothing with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. And the Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Also Henry Roth's Call it Sleep.

[Miguel Aguilera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro duro y realista de lo que fue vivir en carne propia la Gran Depresión norteamericana. Kromer usa cierta riqueza narrativa a la hora de escribir cada uno de los capítulos-relatos casi autobiográficos de ésta única novela suya.

Tom Kromer por momentos grafica en palabras con su voz en off la verdadera miseria social y humana de aquellos años de hambruna norteamericana. Lo hace con cierta maestría, a pesar de ser su primera obra.

Esta obra escrita, según el autor, en papeles de diario, de cigarrillo, en folletos publicitarios y cualquier soporte que le permitiera escribir y encontrara por allí logra alzar la voz de un individuo que observa cómo la sociedad se torna abominable contra los vagabundos y cesantes, y permite al lector sentir casi en carne propia esa opresión brutal que dicha sociedad ejerce sobre los marginales.

Es un libro que se torna grito, es una lectura que espabila y da un golpe frío a las sienes para observar muy de cerca algo que pasó en la década del 30 pero que sigue siendo tremendamente contemporáneo en muchos países.

Lectura recomendada.

[Sylvaine Yvenou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waiting for nothing tel est le titre de ce roman paru en mars 1934 aux U.S.A Un roman désespéré et désespérant sur ces vagabonds de la faim, les stiffs, tous ces hommes et femmes laissés au bord de la route après la Grande dépression. Pas d'argent, pas de travail, pas de toit les voilà sur la route la faim au ventre :« Jour après jour, semaine après semaine, d'année en année, toujours la même chose : tâcher de bouffer et tâcher de dormir. »
Tom Kromer est l'un de ces stiffs il a cloué les "durs" d' Est en Ouest , crevé la dalle , cherché un abri pour pouvoir dormir. Sorti de l'ombre et de la mouise il nous livre ces pages écrites au cours de ses années d'errance. le style est sec, efficace, sans pathos mais on en prend plein la gueule.
Et si seulement on pouvait se réjouir et clamer haut et fort c'est de l'histoire ancienne cela n'arrivera plus , si seulement.. mais voilà ce n'est pas le cas.

[J. D. Román · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si buscan unas memorias fuera de los común, recomiendo este libro. Se trata de la historia de un vagabundo durante la Gran Depresión, narrada por él mismo.

Kromer es directo con sus palabras, por eso la novela es muy corta. Aún así, logra impactar al lector con testimonios sobre lo que es pasar hambre, ser discriminado, ser agredido por la policía e incluso ver en persona a alguien morir.

Es una novela que te deja pensando sobre la dura situación de los vagabundos, especialmente en una época donde la mayoría de las personas estaban sufriendo desempleo.

Junto con la novela, vienen algunos cuentos de Tom Kromer. Los cuentos no están tan buenos como la novela, pero entretienen. Quizá el mejor relato es el último: Autobiografía. Como lo dice el título, ahí Kromer relata su vida en dos páginas.

[Steve Barrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stark and candid look at the life of a downtrodden homeless man during the Great Depression, sort of autobiographical as I understand it. The format is a dozen vignettes about different experiences on the road or trying to find a meal or a place to sleep in the city, told in the first person with short, clipped declarative sentences in a style familiar to the time period. Think of the way people talk in the old movies. There is lots of period slang, too. The author does a great job of taking the reader into his subjective experience, including when his imagination runs wild and he becomes an unreliable narrator. It's a grim and depressing read that lays bare what life was like on the fringes of society during the 1930s.

[Tim Blackburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sobering Account of the Depression

I recommend that all read this book. It's too easy to read a sterile, informative history of the Great Depression and the reasons for it but this author spells out the despair, hunger, cold, brutality, and fear that people had to endure during the Depression in a first-hand personal manner. It is bleak and uncomfortable to read but a tragic period of our history that needs to be remembered. The author was in his mid 20's during the height of the depression and tells his story through a series of vignettes. It is mind-boggling to a modern reader. Please read this book.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic piece of writing, like Patrick MacGill's "Children of the Dead End", drawing heavily from his own lived experiences. Set in the 1930s American depression it recounts the life of a homeless man, but is entirely immersive and convincing. The daily grinding injustices and brutality of a life lived on the breadline are very powerful. I was saddened at the end as I was not able to contact Brian Hamill online afterwards to thank him for publishing it. He was always a warm and friendly presence online, and sadly died recently.

[Jeanfrance Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

suite au crack boursier americain de 1929 .une longue phase economique et de ressession frappe l economie mondial .c est tranchant et efficace incroyable ce roman est bouleversant. cette longue errance manger dormir ne pas mourir.ce qui est violent. ces situations vecus par ces hommes et ses femmes sont encore d actualites. l argot est un langage conventionne imaginer par les voleurs .les vagabonds et les divers classes .des gens en dehord de la societe et de la loi.pour communiquer sans etre compris par ceux qui ny sont pas inities

[Marinelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faut frapper aux portes des maisons jaunes, dit Kromer, parce qu'elles portent chance. La chance je voudrais bien pouvoir la trouver dans ce bouquin en marge du monde, écrit par un de ces fantômes d'auteurs américains, qui, après avoir arraché à la route ses histoires de violence et de misère, disparaît dans la foule indifférente d'un pauvre comté de Virginie-Occidentale. Les Vagabonds de la Faim est un témoignage rescapé de la Grande Dépression, une oscillation entre La Route de London, et Les Raisins de la Colère de Steinbeck, mais avec tous les plans hollywoodiens en moins, que des mots durs pour décrire des situations révoltantes et désespérées de gens qui meurent de faim, et dont le monde se fout.