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By Root 1307 0

affecting memoir, not just as the exceptional feat of a nonagenarian. William Grimes wrote in the New York Times that the “heart-wrenching memoir” evoked a world of pain and prejudice “in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds.” The setting, Grimes added, was so beautifully rendered that the writing recalled early D. H. Lawrence. Other reviewers praised the book’s “dancing prose,” which transported the reader to a street-level view of a world that might otherwise have been lost. “An exceptional book,” wrote a reviewer for the British Guardian. Publishers Weekly lauded Harry for writing a “coming-of-age story” that provides enduring lessons while taking on the “heft of a historical novel with stirring success.” More than one reviewer compared The Invisible Wall to Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s 1996 bestseller about his childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Harry’s publisher in Sweden compared him to Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer.

“The reviews made my head swim,” Harry said. “I never allowed myself to aspire to such literary heights. The praise meant a great deal to me after all those years.”

When he said it, the phrase “all those years” did not glide by me in the cloak of a cliché. I considered how difficult it was to pursue any regimen—diet, exercise, worship, or meditation—day after day, year after year. Then I did the calculations of Harry’s unrequited literary efforts: spanning eighty years, the time between the publication of his first short story and The Invisible Wall exceeded the average American’s life expectancy.

“What drove me?” he asked, echoing my question. He paused, seemingly puzzled, as if he had never before considered that he had a choice in the matter. “I suppose it was ego. I always saw myself as a writer, and I always hoped I would get a book published and find a means to make a living. So I never stopped writing. I’d go down in the basement and pound away. I used to sit down and write blindly. I’d have an idea and say to myself, Let’s see what’s going to happen. There weren’t any rewards in it, but it didn’t make any difference to me. I didn’t talk much about the writing, not even to Ruby,” he said, referring to his wife of sixty-seven years. “I didn’t want to burden her with my hopes, and she respected my privacy. She never once asked me what I was writing. The worst thing anyone could ever say to me was, ‘How’s the writing going?’ ”

The writing was going well the day I met Harry and he welcomed me into his retirement bungalow in Brick, New Jersey, not far from the shore at Point Pleasant. A lunch of tuna, cold cuts, and potato salad, prepared by his homecare aide, was on the kitchen table, awaiting my arrival. As Harry showed me through the living room, decorated in earth tones and vintage Danish modern furniture, I was struck by how imposing, even a couple of years away from the century mark, Harry appeared and by the natural authority of his sonorous voice. His impassive expression gathered weight behind oversize glasses resting on the bridge of his hooked nose. I was reminded that the French writer Georges Simenon swore, “Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.” Between the misery of Harry’s early life and the years of his blighted writing ambitions, I did not expect him to exude the cheeriness of a lottery winner, but I wondered out loud about his sober response to success. “Remember, there were circumstances of writing that book I would rather never have happened,” he said. “It would have made all the difference for Ruby to be here.”

Bracing himself on a walker, Harry rose to his full height of six feet, retrieved a photograph from a shelf, and handed it to me. In the picture, a tan, oval-faced woman with deep brown eyes and hair that was still mostly dark was smiling an irresistible smile. It was one of those smiles that melts age out of a face no matter how lined. Although already in her eighties in the photograph, she was still fit and lithe-looking, dressed in a black