Post #2873760

RE: https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_org/116329285433869562 "Michael 'Mike' Gold was the pen name of Jewish-American writer Itzhok Isaak Granich, a prolific writer, editor, and literary critic of the American proletarian literature movement in the 1930s and 1940s. In April 1914, he was beaten by a police officer while attending an anti-capitalist speech in Union Square, New York City; he bought his first issue of the socialist journal The Masses the very next day, and became a lifelong communist. [...] Besides his commitment to communism, the American Civil War also was a great influence on his work: His pen name was supposedly lifted from a Jewish Union army veteran. Life of John Brown was his first published book, and he later wrote a play, Battle Hymn, based on Brown’s life. Despite his significant literary contributions and fame (his only novel, Jews without Money, went through eleven reprints in its first year alone), he was a marginalized figure during the McCarthy era due to the persecution of communists both real and perceived."