Culture
A chapter of American culture closes with the death of New York’s heterodox wild guy, Noel Parmentel.
The referrals are as dated as “Quemoy” and “Matsu” however, like the guy who composed the lyrics, they still provide a bargain of belligerent wallop. How’s this, to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”?
Hang Earl Warren from a sour apple tree,
His impeachment still will not fill the expense,
For folks like you and me,
We’ll quickly abandon the yoke of his judicial tyranny,
As we go charging on!
The lyricist was the late Noel E. Parmentel, Jr., from his one and just album, Folk Songs for Conservativescarried out by Noel X and His Unbleached Muslims. Launched to no excitement in 1964, at the prime time of the hootenanny, the album’s function, according to Parmentel and his co-conspirator, the “Maine humorist” Marshall Dodge, was “to free this conventional American art type from the tyranny of various Beatniks and Pinkos.”
Just how much liberating it did is difficult to state– conservatives were never ever Peter, Paul and Mary lovers, and couple of folksingers were Joe McCarthy groupies– however most likely damned little. Consider it another exceptional, if loopy, effort to overthrow our political culture by Parmentel, an at some point author, a lot more at some point film star, and full-time character, who passed away August 31 in West Haven, Connecticut.
He was 98 and had actually in some way handled to outlast all his old frenemies– and there was no lack of them amongst the literati of New York, where in the 1950s he obtained a suspicious celeb that far surpassed his any real accomplishment. His durability was itself a secret, as he acknowledged. “No one can figure it out,” as he informed me the last time we spoke, “since I have actually led a really dissolute life.”
An Algiers, Louisiana, native born in 1926, Parmentel appeared in New York’s Greenwich Village throughout its prime time, where he rapidly ended up being a not likely VIP. “I went to a great deal of celebrations when I initially pertained to New York,” he informed me. “That’s why I never ever got much writing done. I was high and single, so I got a great deal of invites to celebrations.”
A dazzling conversationalist– and frightening intoxicated– Parmentel satisfied more youthful individuals with literary aspirations, and he took a generous interest in their professions. Dan Wakefield, in New york city in the Fifties, remembers him “pacing my little, messy house on Jones Street, rattling the ice in his glass of Bourbon, clearing his throat with a series of harrumphs, and pronouncing who was a counterfeit and who was not, like some hulking, middle-aged Holden Caulfield with a New Orleans accent.”
Wakefield states Parmentel was
quickly identified along Fifth Avenue or MacDougal Street, dressed up in white fits and other Rhett Butler– type menswear, with a shock of light brown hair,