"Preface to Plato" had a profound impact almost immediately after publication, but an impact that was complex and inconsistent. The book's claims refer to the ideas of a number of different fields: the study (then fairly new) of oral literature as well as Greek philosophy and Greek philology; the book also acknowledges the influence of literary theory, particularly structuralism. The 1960s were a period in which those fields were growing further apart, and the reaction to "Preface" from each of them was starkly different. Among classicists the response ranged from indifference to derision, with the majority simply questioning the details of Havelock's history of literacy, pointing both to earlier instances of writing than Havelock thinks possible or to later instances of oral influence. Philosophy, particularly Platonic scholarship, was moving in a different direction at the time, and Havelock neither engages nor was cited by the principal movers in that field. However, the book was embraced by literary theorists, students of the transition to literacy, and others in fields as diverse as psychology and anthropology.