The Intellectual Follies: A Memoir of the Literary Venture in New York and Paris
(“Lionel Abel succeeds in entertaining us with great stori...)
“Lionel Abel succeeds in entertaining us with great stories about the artists and writers in Greenwich Village and Paris in the 1930s and ‘40s, and at the same time in shrewdly exposing the moral and political consequences of literary and artistic modernism. The Intellectual Follies is a fascinating memoir on an important subject.” ―Gertrude Himmelfarb A member of that distinctive group of New York intellectuals who came of age during the thirties, Lionel Abel chronicles a half-century of ferment in politics, the arts, and the world of ideas. Along with his spirited analysis of issues and movements, he gives us vivid accounts of his talented contemporaries.
Lionel Abel was a professor and author. He is also known as a great dramatist. Abel was also the authorized translator for the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. Therefore, he spent his life working with words, whether it was writing novels, essays or plays. Lionel Abel was also one of the signers of the "Humanist Manifesto".
Background
Lionel Abel was born on November 28, 1910. He grew up in New York City and left home at a young age for the excitement of Greenwich Village. Abel was the son of Alter Abelson, a rabbi and poet, and of Anna Schwartz Abelson, a writer of short stories. His brother, Raziel Abelson was a professor emeritus of philosophy at New York University; he also had two sisters. Besides his brother, Mr. Abel is survived by two sisters, Aimee Sheff of Manhattan and Carmel Friedman of Englewood, New Jersey.
Education
Lionel Abel graduated from high school at the age of fourteen and moved out of his parents' home when he was fifteen, also shortening his name around this time. Lionel Abel attended St. John’s University in New York from 1926 to 1928, then transferred to the University of North Carolina, which Lionel attended from 1928 to 1929. However, he was expelled for publishing a magazine and never earned a college degree.
Despite never obtaining a college degree, Lionel Abel was offered a professor position at the State University of New York at Buffalo because of his writings. After teaching appointments at Columbia and Rutgers Universities and at the Pratt Institute, he concluded his academic career in the English Department of the University at Buffalo, before retiring to New York City. Then Lionel moved to Greenwich Village. There he became a contemporary of many of the intellectuals and artists of that time and pursued his own writing career. Lionel Abel's first play "The Death of Odysseus" was produced in 1953, but it is his play "Absalom" that brought him to the attention of critics. Absalom told the story of King David’s dilemma over which of his sons should succeed him.
For the most part, Abel’s radical politics and his defense of the cultural underdogs are best expressed in numerous essays which he had contributed to the early years of "Partisan Review, New Politics" and later, in his impassioned critical view of Hannah Arendt’s "Eichmann" in Jerusalem in 1963, which was also linked to Abel’s memorable attack on Irving Kristol and Alfred Kazin.
Personality
A lively and sometimes cantankerous polemicist, Abel counted numerous members of his generation's intellectual elite among his friends and sparring partners, including Delmore Schwartz, Meyer Schapiro, Clement Greenberg, Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Lionel Trilling, James Agee, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Leslie Fiedler and Elizabeth Hardwick.
Quotes from others about the person
John Gross: ''Yet Mr. Abel never leaves you with the feeling that you have heard it all before. He is too independent and effervescent for that; his mind goes off on too many unexpected tangents.''
Dick Schaap: ''Sartre says Abel is the most intelligent man in New York City. Kenneth Rexroth, the poet-critic, says Abel is the most intelligent man in New York City. Abel himself will not say that he is the most intelligent man in New York City. But he will say that Sartre and Rexroth are both magnificent judges of intellect.''
Connections
In 1939, Abel married Sherry Goldman, whom he later divorced. In 1970, he married Gloria Becker.