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{{Short description|American novelist (1906–1969)}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Tom Kromer
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1906|10|20|mf=y}}
| birth_place = {{nowrap|[[Huntington, West Virginia]], U.S.}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1969|1|10|1906|10|20}}
| death_place = {{nowrap|Huntington, West Virginia, U.S.}}
| resting_place = Spring Hill Cemetery<br />Huntington, West Virginia, U.S.
| education = [[Marshall University]]
| movement = [[Literary modernism|Modernism]], [[Literary realism|Realism]]
| spouse = {{Marriage|Janet Smith Kromer|1936|1960|end=died}}
| signature = Signature of Tom Kromer.svg
}}

'''Thomas Michael Kromer''' (October 20, 1906 – January 10, 1969) was an [[American literature|American writer]], mostly known for his ''Waiting for Nothing'' (1935), a semi-autobiographical novel of vagrant or [[hobo]] life during the [[Great Depression]].<ref name="nytimes">{{cite news|title=A Young Hobo; Waiting for Nothing. By Tom Kromer. 188 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1935/03/17/93679549.html?pageNumber=52|access-date=July 4, 2017|work=The New York Times|date=March 17, 1935|language=en}}</ref>

==Biography==
Kromer was born and raised in [[Huntington, West Virginia]], the oldest of five brothers, and he had at least two sisters.<ref name="neg"/> His mother was Grace Thornburg, and his father was Michael Albert Kromer, an immigrant from Russia<ref name="neg">{{Cite web |date=2020-10-05 |title=Who was Tom Kromer? On the author of Waiting for Nothing – The Neglected Books Page |url=https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=7212 |access-date=2021-05-30 |website=Neglected Books |language=en-US}}</ref> who worked as a coal miner and glass blower. He attended [[Marshall University]] for periods in 1925-1929 and did not graduate.<ref name="wve">{{Cite web |last=Douglass |first=Thomas |date=2015-12-07 |title=Tom Kromer |url=https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1256 |access-date=2021-05-30 |website=www.wvencyclopedia.org}}</ref>

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 [[Civilian Conservation Corps|CCC camp]] in California,<ref name="neg"/> but was mostly living as a vagabond. Kromer spent time at Camp Skull Creek, Camp Murpheys, Fort MacArther, and Camp Halls Flat.<ref name="nytimes"/> He also published short stories in ''[[Pacific Weekly]],'' founded and edited by [[Lincoln Steffens]], and an unfinished novel about coal mining and glass blowing, ''Michael Kohler,'' a section of which he adapted as a short story for the ''[[American Spectator (literary magazine)|American Spectator]]''. Kromer's [[literary agent]] was [[Maxim Lieber]],<ref name="Kromer 1935 268">{{cite book| last = Kromer| first = Tom| title = Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings| publisher = Knopf (University of Georgia Press)| date = 1935 | access-date = 4 August 2014| page = 268| isbn = 9780820323688| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=iTJHJlHfx2oC&q=lieber&pg=PA290}}</ref> recommended to him by Lincoln Steffens who was the first literary figure to read and praise the manuscript for ''Waiting for Nothing''.<ref name="neg"/>

He married Jeannette (Janet) Smith in 1936 while he was being treated for tuberculosis and she for rheumatic heart disease in [[Albuquerque, New Mexico|Albuquerque]].<ref name="neg"/> They restored an [[adobe]] house in Albuquerque, and it is on the [[National Register of Historic Places]].<ref name="mps">{{Cite web |last=Department of the Interior. National Park Service. |date=1983 |title=New Mexico MPS Kromer House |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/77845881 |access-date=2021-05-30 |website=National Archives |series=National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program Records: New Mexico}}</ref>
He stopped writing in the 1940s, became a recluse,<ref name="mps"/> and lived as an invalid in Albuquerque. After his wife died in 1960, his family returned him to [[Huntington, West Virginia]], where his sisters and mother cared for him. He died there in 1969<ref>''West Virginia, Deaths Index, 1853-1973''</ref> and was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kromer - Search Spring Hill - Greater Huntington Park & Recreation District |url=https://ghprd.org/index.php/spring-hill-cemetery-search/article/13233-kromer |access-date=2022-04-10 |website=ghprd.org}}</ref> in [[Huntington, West Virginia|Huntington]] in a family plot.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Thomas Michael Kromer (1906-1969) - Find a Grave... |url=https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62295636/thomas-michael-kromer |access-date=2022-04-04 |website=Find A Grave |language=en}}</ref>

==''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.<ref name="nytimes"/>

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 [[Setting (fiction)|setting]]s include rescue missions, [[flop house]]s, 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.<ref name="nytimes"/>

''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. In edition, ''Waiting for Nothing'' was published in England in 1935 by [[Constable & Co.]] with a chapter being omitted for "contents of the chapter were too strong for any publisher to risk in these days of active censorship."<ref>“CENSORSHIP IN ENGLAND.” The Minneapolis Tribune, 15 Sept. 1935, p. 11.</ref>

===Reception===
Reviews praised the book when it was first published. It was reviewed by the ''New York Times'' in 1935<ref name="n35">{{Cite news |last=F.f.k |date=1935-03-17 |title=A Young Hobo; WAITING FOR NOTHING. By Tom Kromer. 188 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2. |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/17/archives/a-young-hobo-waiting-for-nothing-by-tom-kromer-188-pp-new-york.html |access-date=2021-05-28 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> and 1968.<ref name="ny68">{{Cite news |last=Rexroth |first=Kenneth |date=1968-04-21 |title=Stiffs on the Road |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/04/21/archives/stiffs-on-the-road.html |access-date=2021-05-28 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
It has been the subject of poetry<ref name="k85">{{Cite journal |last=Runciman |first=Lex |date=1985 |title=Waiting for Nothing: Tom Kromer, American Century Series |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/428545 |journal=Minnesota Review |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=18 |issn=2157-4189}}</ref>
and has been studied in scholarly journals in 1988,<ref name="k88">{{Cite journal |last=Ditsky |first=John |title=The Depression's "Graveyard Ghosts": A Shared 1990 Motif in Waiting for Nothing and The Grapes of Wrath |url=https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/IFR/article/download/13893/14975 |journal=Studies in American Fiction |via=Johns Hopkins University}}</ref>
1990,<ref name="k90">{{Cite journal |last=Crawford |first=Hugh |date=1990 |title=On the Fritz: Tom Kromer's Imaging of the Machine |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3200263 |journal=South Atlantic Review |volume=55 |issue=2 |pages=101–116 |doi=10.2307/3200263 |jstor=3200263 |issn=0277-335X|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
1995,<ref name="kk95">{{Cite journal |last=Annas |first=Pam |date=1995 |title=Literature as Window, Literature as Mirror: Working-Class Students Meet Their Own Tradition - ProQuest |url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/c7360a80b51d3485019ef7c67e34d26f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=46720 |journal=Radical Teacher |language=en}}</ref>
<ref name="k95">{{Cite journal |last=Obropta |first=Mary |date=1995-01-01 |title=Kromer's Waiting for Nothing |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.1995.9937244 |journal=The Explicator |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=111–114 |doi=10.1080/00144940.1995.9937244 |issn=0014-4940|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
1998<ref name="k98">{{Cite journal |last=FREEMAN |first=ANGELA B. |date=1998 |title=The Origins and Fortunes of Negativity: The West Virginia Worlds of Kromer, Pancake, and Benedict |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40933899 |journal=Appalachian Journal |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=244–269 |jstor=40933899 |issn=0090-3779}}</ref>
and 2019,<ref name="k19">{{Cite journal |last=Parker |first=Robert Dale |date=2019-03-01 |title=How to Make a Queer: The Erotics of Begging; or, Down and Out in the Great Depression |url=https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-7335361 |journal=American Literature |volume=91 |issue=1 |pages=91–119 |doi=10.1215/00029831-7335361 |s2cid=166925100 |issn=0002-9831|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
among others. Echoes of Kromer's work can be found in succeeding authors, [[Breece D'J Pancake]] in particular. This connection seems appropriate considering Pancake grew up in [[Milton, West Virginia]], less than 30 miles from Kromer's hometown of [[Huntington, West Virginia|Huntington]]. Hemingway-like storytelling, the pair share similarities in their approach to literature. Trilobites, Hollow, and The Honored Dead, members of ''The Collected Breece D'J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters'' do not necessarily have a clear intention or theme, but rather explore the mind of a central character, giving a sort of psychological breakdown. Structurally, streaks of Kromer's ''Waiting for Nothing'' are evident in the short stories of Pancake. Another author who draws inspiration from his predecessors is [[Pinckney Benedict]], the trio creating an author genealogy in a sense. An accomplished Appalachian writer, Benedict displays his Kromer/Pancake roots in his story-telling. It is evident Kromer's work was received with high regard by his successors, influencing their writing. While having a less direct correlation, the intricacies of "stiffs" and the impoverished in ''Waiting for Nothing'' appear with a similar depiction in [[John Steinbeck|John Steinbeck's]] ''[[The Grapes of Wrath]]'', both comparing those in poverty to "ghosts in a graveyard."<ref name="k88"/>

==''Michael Kohler''==
{{unreferenced section|date=April 2022}}
In the words of Kromer himself, his unfinished novel ''Michael Kohler'' is 'a working class novel dealing with working-class people.'<ref name="Kromer 1935 268"/> Taking place in the era of the [[Haymarket affair]], ''Michael Kohler'' touches on the idea of workers having influence on the value of their labor, essentially being non-existent. The unfinished novel depicts the structural economic flaws of the Mine Wars, which occurred in West Virginia from 1912 to 1921. After a few introductory chapters, the reader is introduced to Michael Kohler, son of Michael Kohler senior, and effectively becomes the protagonist. Through the lens of Michael, one can see the critiques Kromer is highlighting, being the disparity in wealth and greed of higher-ups. During a period where movements such as the [[Coal Wars|Mine Wars]] gained traction, it becomes clear what message Kromer is portraying, albeit an unfinished project. Michael Kohler can be read and interpreted as a socialist novel through themes of labor and working class struggles.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Frances Gray, ''Waiting for Nothing: Tom Kromer, 1906-1969''. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1979

==External links==
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006534192?type%5B%5D=title&lookfor%5B%5D=waiting%20for%20nothing&ft=ft Full text of ''Waiting for Nothing'']
* [https://www.kromerarchive.org Tom Kromer Archive]
* [https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Waiting+for+Nothing%22&btnG= Critical works, etc. about ''Waiting for Nothing''] listed at [[Google Scholar]]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kromer, Tom}}
[[Category:1906 births]]
[[Category:1969 deaths]]
[[Category:Writers from Huntington, West Virginia]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:Itinerant living]]
[[Category:20th-century American male novelists]]
[[Category:Novelists from West Virginia]]
[[Category:Marshall University alumni]]

Tom Kromer - Revision history

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