To the Editor:

In the July COMMENTARY Lionel Abel, in an excellent review of a book about the abstract expressionist painters [“How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art,” by Serge Guilbaut], drags in my name so as to contrast the political views of the painters with mine. They, writes Mr. Abel, supported Adlai Stevenson against Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, while I “was preaching that there was not a dime’s worth of political difference between the two candidates.”

Not so. Though I regarded the enthusiasm many intellectuals then showed for Stevenson as excessive, I did support and vote for him, precisely because I thought there was “a dime’s worth of political difference. . . .” And I said as much in Dissent (Winter 1954, p. 12).

Irving Howe
New York City

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Lionel Abel writes:

When I heard Irving Howe tear to shreds the “illusions” entertained by Stevenson supporters at a meeting called by Dissent in 1952, I must myself have been full of illusions about the judgments of intellectuals. I could not conceive of Howe voting for Stevenson or urging his election in Dissent. If he did all this, I stand corrected.

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