Norman Mailer, Pulitzer prize-winning author, is shown in Sept. 1984. He sold his archive to University of Texas, but Harvard has bought papers of his long-time mistress. Norman Mailer, Pulitzer prize-winning author, is shown in Sept. 1984. He sold his archive to University of Texas, but Harvard has bought papers of his long-time mistress. (David Pickoff/Associated Press)

The late U.S. writer Norman Mailer left his archives to the University of Texas, but his alma mater, Harvard University, has bought a collection of papers belonging to his longtime mistress.

Harvard paid an undisclosed sum for papers belonging to Carole Mallory of Jeffersonville, Pa., an actress and aspiring writer herself.

Her papers include lengthy accounts of their sex life, as well as photos, transcripts of interviews with Mailer and accounts of writing lessons he gave to her.

"We'd have a writing lesson, we'd make love and then go to lunch in whatever order that would be, and I saved all the writing lessons," said Mallory, 66. "I wanted him to teach me to be a writer. He was one of our greatest writers in America."

Mallory saw Mailer weekly between 1983 and 1992, while the author of The Naked and Dead was married to his sixth wife, Norris Church.

"I don't believe in shame," Mallory said. "I believe in making love and love. I'm not going to go around and harbour secrets or shame about ... loving someone. And I don't think sex is something to be ashamed of."

Mailer would have approved of her attitudes. A key figure in postwar American literature and a controversial writer on women's liberation, he was a notorious womanizer.

Mallory appeared in TV programs such as Archie Bunker's Place and Starsky and Hutch, and also had film roles in The Stepford Wives and Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

She said Mailer encouraged her in her writing, including an unpublished memoir that contains a 20-page sex scene with him.

She also is passing to Harvard a 50-page sex scene which she says is based on her relationship with the writer.

Among the principles Mailer emphasized, and Mallory recorded in her notes: keep the dialogue punchy; stay away from adverbs and don't lecture the reader.

Both Harvard and Mallory refused to release terms of the archive sale, but Mallory said she wanted the papers to be part of history.

Beth Brainard, spokeswoman for the Harvard library, said Harvard wants the papers because Mailer is a grad of the Boston-based university and a significant 20th-century writer.

"It's important to have Mailer represented in some way in the collection," Brainard said.

Norman Mailer died Nov. 10 at age 84.

With files from the Associated Press