Hapke And Bernstein

Hapke suggests that the main problem with Gold bringing the ideas of proletarian fiction from Russia to America is the fact that noone was doing the same thing at this time and so there were a lack of models for Gold to get an idea from.
Gold was seen as the only member of this culture of 'workers' in America who wanted to copy the Soviet's idea of making 'art' dedicated to the world of revoluinary labour i.e. through literature. Early 'alienated' authors who were like Gold, shunned these new ideas as they thought that they did not translate well for America. And so having no support Gold had a few failed attempts at making proletarian fiction as it was hard to make the depression that they were living in seem anything but joyless and dull.
But Hapke thinks that Gold picked this up through "on a Section Gang" by using humor and becoming a worker-correspondant, as if he were reporting to the world the ups and dopwns of life in this culture. He does this by mixing fiction with real life, adding humor and anicdotes and i think this is why he made Jews, only semi-autobiographical as to keep up with this proletcult art, he had to add somethiong different.



Lee Bernstein is suggesting that even though Gold is know for his representation of Class identities, Jews also has strong connections to racial ones. Bernstein says that Gold plays with the boundaries of race and class and that they always differ. He thinks that Race is importanat in Jews, and this is seen trhough the kids racism which wasn't something of white supremecy but more of a relation to power. The bad guys were racist and so they were tough. The book is about avenging anti-semitism and as said playing with racial stereotypes of which Gold does with the character Nigger. Even though Nigger is a Jew like the rest in the story, his name can give him the percepion of the African American. But saying that he is called Nigger becuase he has power, "bold, tameless and untouchable" is how is described which turns around racist views of white power. And so this is how Gold uses race beyond the physical.