Lionel Abel (28 November 1910- 19 April 2001, in Manhattan, New York)[1] was an eminent Jewish American[2] playwright, essayist and theater critic.
Despite never obtaining a college degree, he was offered a professor position at the State University of New York at Buffalo because of his writings.
A lively and sometimes cantankerous polemicist, he 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.
In early October 1963 Dissent Magazine organized a public event for detractors and supporters of Arendt's work to air their positions; it was moderated by Irving Howe and attended by a packed audience of "more than 300 people" at the Woodstock Hotel in New York City.
His banging, magnified by the microphone, was followed by a cascade of boos," and that the rest of the event consisted of audience responses in which individuals berated and disparaged the participants speaking in support of Arendt.
[7] In a 1995 response letter to an article concerning Arendt by Tony Judt, both published in the NYRB, Abel expressed regret for having participated in the event, stating that "It was not proper to address complex ideas as the Dissent meeting tried to do. "