Dark Thoughts

Bum: who are you?First, let’s take a breath. That was one heck of an intense book. No wonder Tom Kromer never went on to publish another novel! Waiting for Nothing is an unforgiving account of day to day homeless life during the depression. Its rough subject matter (starving babies, mutilated bodies) makes everything else we’ve read sound about as scary as another installment of Boxcar Children. In this way, the book felt modern in its attempt to relate to homelessness by showcasing the harshness of day to day life. The chapters come and go like nightmares, horrible dreams unconnected in any sort of timeframe. Our hero keeps emphasizing the absence of time in the life of a hobo, what does another day matter? A week? A year?
There is also much talk about suicide. It seems like the easy way out for our hero, who greets every possibility of death with some morbid rationale. He never chose death over life, but seemed very open to experiencing it. During the depression, suicide rates didn’t necessarily go up according to national statistics, but high profile suicides in the eyes of the public gave America the uneasy feeling that suicide was growing. But, as this book shows, no one was paying much attention to frozen stiffs in mission houses. Who knows how bad suicide really was? By the time I finished this book, I was cold enough to bite the bullet.
This book raised a lot of questions in my mind. Mainly, will this change how I view the homeless of contemporary New York City? Hunger was the driving force behind most of our hero’s actions. I wonder how hungry New York City homeless are? Do they freeze? Do they get chopped up on the subway tracks? It’s strange that we have to ask ourselves these very fundamental questions regarding the value of human life, and it’s curious why these statistics aren’t more widely known. I mean, I know a lot, statistically speaking, and I’m usually up to date. I feel out of the loop, separated from my homeless brethren from the lack of information between us. But that’s just what Kromer was trying to point out. There is a lack of knowledge that creates an ocean of difference between two people that are still just two people. Are we (not homeless people) still so mean to the homeless if they ask for help? Are we better suited to take care of these people nowadays? My thought is that we are, but without that real knowledge in my mind, I am weary of contemporary homelessness. Maybe it’s still that bad. Just maybe.