Sundays With Noel | The Nation

There was a time when Noel Parmentel (recently deceased), an occasional contributor to this magazine, called me almost every Sunday. I picked up the phone and asked him in his gravelly voice: Noel. ”

It wasn’t always a happy thing to have my Sunday interrupted like this, but looking back I’m glad he dropped every penny. What did we talk about? Probably gossip about the conduct of of nation And literature in general. Noel read a lot. I remember him once telling me to fire someone who was part of the “non-torture class”, quoting Graham Greene. Noel and I were part of a generation of ambitious people who moved to New York in the ’60s, desperate to make a name for themselves. Of course, there was a business element to Noel and my relationship. Sooner or later, he’ll dangle an article idea in front of me like a lion tamer shakes his steak before making an accusation. Noel knew what he was doing. He was a professional and a hell of a writer. This is a free sample of his prose style, cut from a piece he wrote for us about a con man named Stu Leonard. “Skim fraud in the stew dairy industry”

“Stu Leonard’s sentencing date is scheduled for October 20th in U.S. District Court in New Haven, where Fairfield County’s big butter and egg man (now a stalwart of the light opera Gotterdamlung) Water will know his fate. On the advice of attorney James Neal, the prosecutor in the Gate case, Leonard attempted to defraud the federal government of $17.5 million in taxes siphoned from three Norwalk co-defendants and the world’s largest dairy store. We are cracking down on statements that say “we colluded.” The guidelines call for up to five years in prison, in addition to the $15 million fine already imposed. Barring divine intervention, Leonard will trade his Holstein Gladboro for a Danbury pinstriper. Old Man McDonald never had a day like this. ”

Well, to all the J School graduates, this is Rede!

So our Sabbath discussions were not in vain. Some of his best ideas were eventually published as articles in . nation.

But wait a minute, I hear a voice say. Wasn’t Noel a conservative contributor to Bill Buckley? national review?

That’s certainly true. But Noel was politically ambidextrous. One of his friends, the writer Dan Wakefield, said he “ravaged the right wing in the pages of magazines.” of nationturn around and do the same to the left. national review and blew up both sides esquireAnd everyone liked it. ” Regarding his politics, he defined himself as a “reactionary individualist.”

His former lover and mentor, the novelist Joan Didion, put it more pointedly: “He didn’t belong to anything. He was an outsider who lived by his ability to manipulate his inner self.”

In addition to being a classy writer, Noel had the transactional instincts of a shark literary agent. Add to that the fact that he was a fellow writer contributor and generous motivator. When he and Didion were in the spotlight, he encouraged her to complete her first novel, Run River. After they finally broke up, he reconciled her with John Gregory Dunne, then a reporter for Time, and she later married him. The two moved to the Left Coast, where they became sought-after screenwriters.

Noel himself had great talent and originality as a magazine writer. In fact, in his article, esquireI think it was Victor Navasky that attracted me. of nationThe then-editor of “Wednesday” coveted his prose. It was titled “The Acne and the Ecstasy” and was a satire of Young Americans for Freedom, a cabal of young, acne-prone conservatives.

I now realize that even during the political stress of the 60s and 70s, Noel and I were able to talk across the divide. There may be lessons for today’s writers.