J. P. Marquand, Boston Satirist, Found How Culture Feels While at Harvard

John P. Marquand '15, Pulitzer prize-winning satirist of Boston's blue-bloods, does not feel he owes all his success to Harvard. "The greatest thing I got out of Harvard was an idea of what it might feel like to be cultivated," he said in an interview yesterday.

He appeared briefly on the Boston scene Tuesday to autograph copies of his latest book, "Wickford Point," which features a Harvard Housemaster turned novelist. Seated behind an imposing pile of his latest works, Marquand was guarded from a rush of autograph-seekers which failed to materialize, by an efficient lady literary agent and a high-brow sob sister from the Transcript (pronounced Trahnscript) for which he worked in its palmier days.

Yesterday, however, Little Brown & Company allowed him to take down his hair at a press conference. The former Lampy editor, who failed to make the CRIMSON "despite the advice of Dr. Conant, who had just made it himself," mourned the passing of "the flowering of New England."

"I would like to see a great many smaller colleges all over the country instead of a few big educational factories such as Harvard has become," he said. "But perhaps Harvard has kept a good deal of the old New England tradition anyhow."

For budding authors, Marquand advises newspaper work or advertising as the best training. A reporter himself at one time, the creator of Mr. Moto wrote advertising copy; he admitted his star jobs were advertisements for Blue Buckle Overalls and Lifebuoy Soap.

Can't Teach Writing

"I don't think you can teach anybody to write; the only possible way to learn is through experience--most young writers don't know enough about life," he said.

Of his own work, which has been compared to Thackeray's by Clifton "Information Please" Fadiman of the New Yorker, Marquand said, "The awful thing in writing in to take yourself too seriously. I don't want ever to feel I'm a great writer I want to be only too conscious of my own defects. Nor do I yearn to write a 'monumental work'."

"I hear Dr. Conant is trying to get rid of the "C" men," he said in conclusion. "I would have been one of the first to go."