sultrier aspects ofintellectualism.) Noonan was always careful to convey that while she might have worked in the White House, survived the internecine battles of Washington politics, frolicked with the charismatic and the powerful, and chatted with presidents, she was still just Our Peg of Massapequa and Farleigh Dickinson, a red-white-and-blue-blooded American gal who couldn't quite believe where she was - or the size of the egos around her. As befitting a speechwriter for the first Hollywood president, she told her story in the classic Frank Capra vein: casting herself as the idealistic heroine, filled with patriotic zeal to work for her country, who but who manages comes to Washington only to get burned by bureaucrats nonetheless to score a few points for democracy, truth, and the American way. And it was all done with a dash of sophistication and verve that Marilyn Quayle can only dream about. Noonan continues the Game - much less successfully - in her new book, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit ofHappiness. She begins in a beauty parlor, "the kind of salon where the women look beautiful and perfect even before they get their haircut. They glide in ... good suit, short skirt, StairMastered legs." Our Peg is, of course, unaccustomed to all this opulence: "I am new here, do not know these people," "We are high above the avenues of Manhattan, in midtown, in the heart of the gold souk, and I am sockless in my sneakers feeling strange." She launches into a reverie in which she free-associates with abandon, toying with her vision of "the old and the new America," cultural malaise, boomer mid-life crises, motherhood, and so-called family values, all the while having her hair shampooed by the obsequious staff. While so drifting, she runs the gamut of thought from platitude to cliche, "we'll never go back to the old way again, ever"; pronounces commonplace insights with an air of great profundity, "my generation, we believe in work'" indulges in some dreadful alliterative descriptions, "the spray sound somehow surprises" (the reader retches remarkably rapidly); strikes a tradition-lovin' Luddite pose (she announces that she askes for things to be mailed rather than faxed, which has the effect, Our Peg says, of engendering an "air of discovery" in the sender); and most of all, longs for the good 01' days, the "hungryyears," ofher parents' generation (don't expect an acknowedgment that the values she celebrates didn't include luxuriating in ultra-chic salons). And she actually seems to expect us to believe in her big metaphorical denoument, in which one of the perfect women in the salon freaks out and runs into the street, with aluminum foils still adorning her hair. This convenient nervous breakdown allows Noonan to opine that the woman is "an emblem for modern life. I mean postmodern life. In the new America." (Hmmm. I'm not really sure what that's all supposed to mean, though I guess it has something to do with Bill Clinton). Throughout her opening epiphany, Noonan consistently mistakes words for thoughts and musings for arguments. And she's only just begun. Here she is at a Washington party, after her lunch partner, new to the scene, confesses his intimidation. Our Peg admits a teensy-weensy bit of awe, too (although she's careful to squeal, "and I've been here before!"). She points out the
140 •
BAFFLER