 Shortly after publication of Preface to Plato , Havelock accepted a position as chair of the Classics Department at Yale University . He remained in New Haven for eight years , and then taught briefly as Raymond Distinguished Professor of Classics at the State University of New York at Buffalo . He retired in 1973 and moved to Poughkeepsie , New York , where his wife Christine Mitchell , whom he had married in 1962 , taught at Vassar College . He was a productive scholar after his retirement , writing three books as well as numerous essays and talks expanding the arguments of Preface to Plato to a generalised argument about the effect of literacy on Greek thought , literature , culture , society , and law . 
