Noted journalist and author Joe Klein will present this year’s Harry Howard Jr. Lecture on Tuesday, October 26th in Wilson Hall 103 at 4:10 p.m. His lecture is entitled “All the King's Men and Primary Colors: The Relationship Between Political Fiction and Political Factors in Election Year 2004..”

Klein is a senior writer at Time magazine and a regular contributor to Paula Zahn Now on CNN. His weekly column in Time, “In the Arena,” covers national and international affairs. Klein has also been the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker and a columnist for Newsweek. He won a National Headliner Award for his Newsweek column, “Public Lives.” He has served as consultant for CBS News, a Washington bureau chief for Rolling Stone, and a political columnist for New York, where he won a Washington Monthly Journalism Award for a cover story on race. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, Life, and the Washington Post.

As “Anonymous,” Klein wrote the best selling novel Primary Colors (Warner Books, 1996) which was inspired by the 1992 U.S. presidential race. The New York Times Book Review called it “one of the best political novels to appear in the latter half of the twentieth century.” Klein’s contribution to the field of political fiction was very much influenced by Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men. Warren’s 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is considered one of the greatest political novels of all time. It is loosely based on the life of Louisiana politician, Governor Huey Long. Klein’s lecture will be one of several events the Warren Center is hosting in the 2004/2005 academic year to honor the centennial of Warren’s birth. Warren was born April 25, 1905 in Guthrie, Kentucky, and graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1925.

During the week of the Howard Lecture, the Warren Center and the Sarratt Film Committee are co-sponsoring the showing of the films based on Warren’s and Klein’s novels. All the King’s Men will be shown on October 27th, and Primary Colors will be shown on October 28th. Please contact the Sarratt Cinema for information regarding times of the showings.

The Harry C. Howard Jr. Lecture Series was established in 1994 through the endowment of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Nash, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. George D. Renfro, all of Asheville, North Carolina. The lectureship honors Harry C. Howard, Jr. (B.A. 1951) and allows the Warren Center to bring an outstanding scholar to Vanderbilt annually to deliver a lecture on a significant topic in the humanities.