Noel Edward Parmentel Jr. (June 21, 1926 – August 31, 2024) was an American writer who was a leading figure on the New York political journalism, literary, and cultural scene during the 20th century.
Born in 1926 in the Algiers section of New Orleans, Parmentel attended Tulane University after World War II service in the US Marine Corps, and moved to New York City in the 1950s.
[1] There, he quickly became a prominent fixture in literary circles and in political journalism, "the tall, shambling New Orleans freelance pundit,"[2] known for his witty essays, usually targeting those he considered "phonies," be they of the left or the right.
[4] He was "a respecter of no race or tradition or station," his style "that of an axe-murderer, albeit a funny one," in the words of his early protégé John Gregory Dunne;[5] William F. Buckley Jr., wrote admiringly of Parmentel's "vituperative art.
"[6] In the New York of the day, though "phonies" were proportionately distributed among the political classes, the left was more numerous than the right; Parmentel thus had the reputation in some circles of being an arch-conservative, though he described himself as a "reactionary individualist".
[11] In 1964 he and Marshall Dodge published Folk Songs for Conservatives, illustrated by the caricaturist David Levine and containing such lyrics as "Won't You Come Home, Bill Buckley," "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dewey," "D'Ye Ken John Birch", and "I Dreamed I Saw Roy Cohn Last Night", with a companion LP record of the songs purportedly sung by "Noel X and the Unbleached Muslims";[12] and he and Levine published a booklet of rhymes and caricatures of Johnson Administration figures called Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.
[15] The lively New York intellectual ferment of the 1950s and 1960s faded with the general decline of the city in the 1970s and 1980s, and Parmentel's activity fell off along with that of the other prominent figures of those golden years.