George H. Ingram

Goodbye George

Was fun hanging out with you in the woods.

Best   -  Michael

Remembering Noel Ignatiev

For me, there were two Noels.

One was the “Marxist radical”--as an  admiring former student described him in the New Yorker--who blamed most of the world’s problems on white males

The other Noel was the guy who often sat next to me in class because our last names began with the same letter.

Noel and I were both products of working-class families, which may be one of the reasons we became friends. Intellectually superior to me, he was always prodding me to think about issues that were more important than playing the pinball machine after school at the steak shop down the hill. It was an Augean assignment for him because I was trying to be the cool, tough guy I really wasn’t.

“Why aren’t you reading The New York Times?” he demanded one day.

“Because it doesn’t have any comic strips,” I said.

After graduation we lost touch with each other until, many years later, the internet brought us together again. Our electronic discussions did not involve topics like Marxism, proletarians, and white-skin privilege. We just enjoyed dredging up humorous and sometimes painful memories of Central. 

In one email I reminded him of the time our dreaded English teacher, “Flash” Gordon, opined that the greatest opera was “Don Giovanni.”

As usual, Noel had more to say. “At the time I was a Verdi fan, he wrote. “But now I agree with him, though I might add that ‘The Magic Flute’ is a contender… I disliked Gordon when I was at CHS.  Now I value him more than any of the others.”

Noel added that he even cited Gordon in his introduction to Modern Politics, a series of lectures he edited by C.L.R. James, a West Indian historian and critic. He sent me the relevant passage:

“James devotes part of the final lecture to what he calls ‘the undying vision,’ a survey of works of art he believes point the way toward the future. He names D.W. Griffith, Chaplin, and Picasso. All of them, he argues, were shaped by the need to serve a popular audience. Elsewhere he had said the same about the Greeks and Shakespeare. One of my teachers in high school, Dr. Gordon, told us that if we had gone up to someone on the street in London in 1605 and asked the names of the best poets, the answer would have been Marlowe or Donne or Johnson. If we had asked about Shakespeare, our informant would have slapped his upper leg and said, ‘Will Shakespeare—why he’s the best playwright in town!’ Theater was seen as popular entertainment, not serious literature. Dr. Gordon would have shared James’s view. If Shakespeare were alive today, he would be writing for the movies.”

Noel could be self-effacing, too. In one of his emails he offered the spurious comment that his old buddy  had “managed to earn a living by your pen, a feat I regard as a true test of talent…and one I was not able to accomplish.”

He sent me several copies of Hard Crackers, the magazine he served as managing editor. His voice could almost be heard in the publication’s motto: “There is no set price for either single issues or subscriptions. Pay what you can.” 

The last time I actually saw Noel was in the mid-1990s, when I was in charge of public relations at Temple University.

A poster tacked to a kiosk advertised that Noel Ignatiev was coming to speak at a meeting of the campus SDS group. Now, the University “suits” did not make a habit of attending gatherings of the “radical” students, some of whom had been involved in campus sit-ins.  All I planned to do was visit for a minute and say hello to an old classmate.

“What are you doing here?” one of students barked in disgust—and maybe in fear--when I walked into the lecture hall.

“I’m here to see a friend I haven’t seen in a long time,” I said.

Just then Noel entered the room, caught sight of me, came over with that big Noel smile, and shook my hand.

“Watch out,” warned the surly student. “He’s probably working for the FBI.”

Noel shook his head. “Not my George,” he said.

That was the Noel I knew.

George Ingram

Beautiful remarks, Paul. Allan's obituary was published in yesterday's Inquirer.