Mike Gold

Mike Gold was the pseudonym of the New York–born, communist journalist Irwin Granich. His writing was impassioned, scathing, and often sentimental. An advocate of proletarian literature, he was a caustic critic of bourgeois writers who were far more skilled at their craft than he. He was editor in chief of The New Masses from 1928 to 1934 and a columnist at the Daily Worker until his death. A champion of the Soviet Union throughout his life, he consistently hewed to the party line. His one work of lasting importance was his autobiographical novel Jews without Money (1930), which brilliantly evoked the squalor, insecurity, and violence of immigrant life on the Lower East Side. It was a bestseller, was translated into many languages, and became a prototype for the American proletarian novel.