As Gold wrote JWM he apparently drafted it in short sections or "episodes." Each one of these is a short "story", usually about an individual but sometimes about an incident in Mikey's life.
I've obtained the originals of these episodes, first published in The New Masses, a left magazine published from the 1920s to the late 1940s. Very influential -- it attracted many or most of the major American writers, poets, and critics during these years but especially in the 1930s -- TNM was open to "left" -- meaning, pro-working class, anti-racist and pro-labor writers. There were many editors of TNM during this period. Some of them, like Gold himself, were members of the Communist Party USA.
Here is a link to these short pieces in TNM. Please download and print three of them, and bring them to class.
For your HW, pick two of these. Group 1 pick the first two in the list; Group 2 the next two, and so on. EVERYBODY print and bring to class the last one, "The Young Avengers."
Write 150 words, or a bit more, on each passage, on the differences between the short pieces as they appeared in TNM, and as they finally appeared as part of the novel JWM. Make specific reference to the page numbers in the novel, so we can all find the passages.
Total length: 150+ words on each of the two passages, for a total of 300+ words. One email only; don't send two different emails. Email to your group and to me.
Print it out, bring it to class. Also print out and bring to class the three passages you are responsible for -- two for your group alone, plus the last one.
In class we will hear each group report on what you found.