Michael Gold Quotes
We promise you a hundred Shakespeares.
The statement was in response to criticism about the literary quality of the emerging writers of New Masses. The magazine, a Marxist / Communist-oriented publication was supposed to provide a literary outlet for worker-writers whose views were so suppressed that they could never develop their writing skills. Despite Gold’s efforts and many attempts to find working class writers, most of the quality literature in New Masses came from liberal, middle-class writers, known before they ever published in New Masses. These included Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Katherine Ann Porter, Lewis Mumford, Clifton Fadiman and many others.
Michael Gold, 1894-1967, Political Writer and Editor of New Masses, “Notes of the Month,” New Masses, September 1930
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Michael Gold was the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic. His semi-autobiographical novel Jews Without Money (1930) was a bestseller. During the 1930s and 1940s Gold was considered the preeminent author and editor of U.S. proletarian literature.
