Career
Dedicated "to Jolene, who turned off the gas," the work is a realistic account of life as a homeless man during the Great Depression. 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 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. was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1935, reissued by Hill & Wang in 1968, and, in a definitive edition edited by Arthur Doctorate. Casciato and James L.W. West III, reprinted as and Other Writings by the University of Georgia Press in 1986.
Kromer"s literary agent was Maxim Lieber.
