Waiting for Nothing and Other Writings

Athens/London: University of Georgia Press. Fine in Fine dj. (c.1986). 1st printing. Hardcover. [a beautiful, as-new copy, with no discernible wear to either book or jacket]. Handsomely-produced reprint of the author's mid-Depression down-and-out novel, originally published in 1935, augmented by the text of his unfinished novel, "Michael Kohler," four short stories, various book reviews and other writings, and an afterword relating what little is known about Kromer's life. Beginning in 1929, he spent five years roaming America by rail, searching for work; it gave him the raw material for this raw novel, in which the narrator experiences hunger and extreme deprivation, and endures all manner of degradation (including homosexual prostitution), and contracts tuberculosis to boot. Kromer's health steadily deteriorated, and although he lived until 1969, he did little or no writing during the last thirty years of his life. The novel is absolutely essential reading for any student of Depression-era proletarian literature, plus it has my all-time favorite dedication, the appropriately nihilistic "To Jolene, who turned off the gas." This edition was issued primarily as a trade paperback; the hardcover issue is remarkably scarce. .