Sober Mailer Cleans Up Act, Delivers Speech

In sharp contrast to his last Harvard appearance, Norman Mailer '43, describing himself as "virtually stone sober", gave a lecture last night entitled "From Poetry to Espionage" to a Sanders Theater crowd of about 700.

Mailer's prepared talk, sponsored by the Harvard Advocate and the Signet Society, compared the confusion surrounding the treatment of modern poetry with the doubts of many Americans about the events of the last ten years.

In his opening remarks, Mailer mentioned his last visit to Harvard two years ago when he appeared at South House with ice and a bottle of bourbon. "It is my favorite theory that we are built upon not one personality but two," Mailer said and added he wished to present a different side of his own personality.

Douglas A. MacIntyre, president of the Advocate said the lecture was not simply for financial reasons. "It's the type of thing we do every couple of years," he said, "and Mailer is on our Board of Trustees. Nobody loses with something like this."