The Intellectual Follies by Lionel Abel
"The Intellectual Follies" by Lionel Abel is a memoir that offers a reflective look at the intellectual climate of the 20th century, particularly during the rise of the New York intellectuals in the 1930s through the early 1980s. Abel, who engaged deeply with this vibrant cultural scene as a critic, playwright, and essayist, provides insights into the discussions and dynamics that characterized Greenwich Village, a hotspot for radical thought and artistic expression. The work is organized into twelve chapters, each exploring different themes and experiences, such as radicalism, existentialism, and the evolution of theater, while traversing various time periods and connecting ideas across generations.
Abel’s writing combines various forms, blending description, narration, and exposition, often with a serious tone infused with humor. He critiques the intellectual landscape of his time, expressing concern about a perceived decline in social responsibility and moral engagement, particularly among audiences and artists in the 1980s. Despite these critiques, Abel maintains an optimistic outlook on the potential for intellectual revival and the impact of human agency in shaping culture and society. Overall, "The Intellectual Follies" serves as both a personal memoir and a historical account, reflecting the complexities of intellectual life and the interplay of ideas that defined an era.
Subject Terms
The Intellectual Follies by Lionel Abel
First published: 1984
Type of work: Memoir
Time of work: The 1920’s to the 1980’s
Locale: New York City and Paris
Principal Personages:
Lionel Abel , an intellectualMichael , his friend in CaliforniaHannah Arendt , a political philosopher and social theoristJean-Paul Sartre , a French philosopher and literary figure
Form and Content
In November of 1929, one month after the stock market crash which signaled the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States, eighteen-year-old Lionel Abel entered the world of Greenwich Village, a cultural mecca which attracted a wide assortment of interesting characters. During the years which followed Abel’s entrance into this world, groups of young radicals (adherents to Marxism in its many varieties) gathered in the various Village meeting places to discuss the implications of what they saw as an impending social revolution. Though they did not consider themselves a coherent group at the time, these young radicals have come to be known collectively as “the New York intellectuals.”
Lionel Abel became a member of the first generation of this group. He actively participated in the Greenwich Village intellectual life as a prolific critic, translator, and editor in the heyday of the New York intellectuals (the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s). Thereafter, he became a prize-winning playwright (his play Absalom won two awards as the best off-Broadway play of 1956) and essayist (he won a Longview Award for “Not Everyone Is in the Fix,” an essay on playwright Jack Gelber), as well as an influential commentator on modern theater with his book Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (1963). The Intellectual Follies contains Abel’s reflections on intellectual life as he experienced it from the 1930’s to the early 1980’s.
By definition, a memoir provides the reflections of its author on significant events and on the personalities and actions of other persons. The Intellectual Follies, then, takes shape not primarily as a narrative account of Abel’s life but as a collection of essays on various topics (portions of some essays were published prior to 1984 in such periodicals as Dissent, Commentary, This World, Salmagundi, and The American Scholar). There are twelve chapters in all, each chapter addressing a single general topic but containing several smaller essays of varying lengths. The arrangement of chapters is chronological, the sequence of topics corresponding roughly to the order of Abel’s experiences. Chapter 1 begins with his initiation into the world of the New York intellectuals, and chapter 12 ends with an undated letter to a friend, Michael, probably written in the early 1980’s. Within this time frame, the major portion of the book (ten of the twelve chapters, or 257 of the 289 pages) covers the three decades from the formation of the New York intellectuals in the 1930’s to their breakup as a group in the late 1950’s.
To say that chronology accounts entirely for the book’s structure, however, is somewhat misleading. Abel frequently cuts across time periods in his smaller essays, rarely maintaining a straight line of thought. He sometimes jumps backward but mostly moves forward in time as he traces relationships between ideas of different generations. Thus, there are references in the first ten chapters to the 1960’s and 1970’s, even though that portion of the work is essentially set in earlier decades. Chapters 11 and 12 take the reader up to the point of the writing of the book (from the 1960’s into the early 1980’s), but Abel refers to earlier decades in those chapters too.
Abel writes on a variety of topics and in a variety of forms. Chapter topics include life in Greenwich Village in the 1930’s, the 1930’s as a decade of radicalism, intellectual decisions at the beginning of World War II, the Surrealist painters, Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism, the atom bomb, Paris in the late 1940’s, New York in the early 1950’s, off-Broadway theater, Abel’s Jewish heritage, and life in New York in the early 1980’s. Within the chapters, Abel varies his approach, using combinations of description, narration, and exposition. At times he is casual (writing as if engaged in conversation), and at other times he is formal. He never writes entirely without humor but usually adopts a serious tone. Rarely does a narrative or descriptive essay exist without being used to illustrate a point. Abel continually applies anecdotes, incidents, and character sketches to whatever thesis he is advancing at the moment so as to give not only a flavor of the times but also a commentary, in retrospect, on the major ideas discussed.
Critical Context
Most people associate the 1930’s with the Great Depression, with great suffering and privation. Yet during the 1930’s, the United States experienced a social and cultural phenomenon the likes of which (despite Abel’s hopes to the contrary) may never be seen again. The rise of the New York intellectuals helped make New York City an internationally renowned cultural center. As one critic noted, “It would be hard to find a more authentic specimen of the New York literary-political-Jewish intellectual than Lionel Abel.” Abel’s memoir, then, is important as a record of cultural history, a record of who was who in the internationalization of American art and politics, a record of the exciting world of ideas and ideologists in the early twentieth century.
In a sense, Abel’s approach to life in The Intellectual Follies is defined in his renowned book Metatheatre. There, Abel notes that what he calls the “metaplay” is defined by two ideas: “the world is a stage” and “life is a dream.” From these ideas, he concludes that “the world is a projection of human consciousness” and that “there is no world except that created by human striving, human imagination.” Seen in this context, the word “follies” in The Intellectual Follies connotes a kind of theatrical production in which the author and the characters self-consciously create their own roles. That is Abel’s subject, a world of ideas in which people can make a difference through active involvement. “Metatheatre,” according to Abel, implies that “fate can be overcome” and that the world is not to be regarded as “ultimate.”
The ideas from Metatheatre parallel Abel’s thoughts on social responsibility. In the final chapter of The Intellectual Follies, Abel urges Michael to create a role for himself, and throughout the book Abel criticizes those who do not actively take a stand—create a role. For example, in chapter 9 (“Off-Broadway”), he criticizes the “absence of any dominant trend” in the theater of the 1980’s and puts the blame partially on audiences who “don’t want anything in particular from playwrights.” Similarly, he is worried that people in the 1980’s no longer self-consciously create a moral role.
Nevertheless, what is rational cannot die. Thus, as long as there are people, there is hope for a revival of the life of the mind. Abel is ultimately optimistic, despite his occasional bemoaning of society’s intellectual bankruptcy. This optimism shapes not only the content of the book but its style and tone as well.
Bibliography
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De Pietro, Thomas. Review in The Sewanee Review. XCIV (Summer, 1986), pp. lxii-lxiv.
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Los Angeles Times. Review. November 27, 1984, sec. 5, p. 6.
The New Republic. Review. CXCII (February 11, 1985), pp. 28-31.
The New York Times Book Review. Review. LXXXIX (November 18, 1984), p. 7.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXVI, September 14, 1984, p. 134.
Solomon, Barbara Probst. Review in Partisan Review. LII, no. 3 (1985), pp. 282-286.
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