Harry Sylvester


Harry Ambrose Sylvester was an American short-story writer and novelist in the first half of the 20th century. His stories were published in popular magazines such as Collier's, Esquire, Columbia, and Commonweal. The most popular of his novels were Dearly Beloved, Dayspring, and Moon Gaffney. He was asked to turn John Steinbeck's script for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat into a short story. This version was published in Collier's in 1943, with Steinbeck and Hitchcock both receiving writing credits.
He is remembered primarily as the author of Dayspring and a friend of Ernest Hemingway.

Early life

Sylvester was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1908. His grandfather was Jeremiah Curtin, a folklorist who influenced W. B. Yeats's interest in Irish mythology.
His father, Harry Sylvester, Sr., was heavily involved in politics during the 1920s and 30s, serving as a Republican in New York in a number of capacities.
After graduating from Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, Sylvester went to Notre Dame in 1926. There, he played football for Knute Rockne. During his time as a undergraduate, he served a regular sports editor and contributor to the school's weekly newspaper, Scholastic. During college, he also worked as a lifeguard in New York which would prove influential for some of his early short stories. He graduated in 1930 with a degree in journalism.
Soon after graduating from college, Sylvester found work as a correspondent for the New York Evening Post and a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. Sylvester wrote mostly about sports, especially football and baseball. During this time he traveled to Florida to follow the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1936, he wed Rita Ryall Davis of Manhattan. They had four children together, John, Anne, Joan, and Clare.

Literary career

In 1933, Sylvester gave up a full-time job as a journalist in order to concentrate on his fiction writing. His first novel, Big Football Man, was released that same year. The novel, a bildungsroman, revolves around the young football star Sebastian as he navigates the complexities of college life. Sylvester drew upon his own experiences playing for Notre Dame for the story.
Dearly Beloved, his second novel and the first of his religious trilogy, was published in 1942. This novel deals with issues of racism and economic inequality, looking particularly at the Catholic Church's role in navigating such societal issues. Set in Southern Maryland, Dearly Beloved is "about a small group of Jesuit priests doing what we might call missionary work among the hard-drinking, amoral, fiercely color-conscious poor whites, and the Negroes." Sylvester conducted extensive research into the area, the Jesuits, and the concept of co-ops for this novel.
He followed this up with a third novel in 1945, Dayspring, which follows the investigations of an atheist anthropologist named Spencer Bain. The story chronicles Bain's research into the Hermanos de Luz and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism through the process. Sylvester deals realistically with themes such as adultery and abortion in Dayspring, which earned the novel mixed reviews upon its publication. The story was inspired by his trips to New Mexico. Dayspring was Sylvester's first novel to attract international attention; the literary publishing house, Rich & Cowan, released an edition of the book in 1949.
His fourth novel, Moon Gaffney, was published in 1947. Moon Gaffney's story centers on a young man torn between his political ambitions and his religious ideals. Sylvester dedicated Moon Gaffney to a group of "good Catholic radicals," including John C. Cort and Dorothy Day. Like his novel, Dearly Beloved, Sylvester was accused of pushing anti-clerical views after publication. During his lifetime, Moon Gaffney was the most popular of his novels, to the point that the novel was translated into Polish by Maria Kłos-Gwizdalska and printed in 1955, with French and Italian translators also approaching Sylvester for permission to bring his work to Europe. Sylvester declined all translation requests, except for that of Klos-Gwizalska. The book was reprinted in 1976 by Arno Press, which briefly revived interest in Sylvester's work.
While traveling and researching for his novels, Sylvester wrote short stories to support his wife and children. This sometimes meant laying aside his larger works, something that continually bothered Sylvester. He would later detail this problem in a speech, "Problems of the Catholic Writer," which was later printed as an essay for the Atlantic Monthly.
In 1948, Sylvester arranged a collection of his short stories and published them under the title All Your Idols. According to the author's note, the book contains stories originally printed in various magazines including Collier’s, Esquire, Story magazine, Scribner’s magazine, Columbia magazine, Good Housekeeping, The Western Review, and Commonweal. The collection received generally favorable reviews.
Sylvester's final published novel, A Golden Girl, is set in Peru and is his least overtly religious work. Based upon his own travels to Latin America, the story follows a young American expatriate in Lima during the bullfight season, and the fallout he experiences after becoming romantically involved with a troubled young woman from New York. It was his most critically derided work.
He was also a prolific writer of book reviews, publishing over 100 reviews for outlets such as Commonweal and the New York Times between 1931 and 1974.

Later life

The publication of this final novel coincided with the beginning stages of his divorce from Rita in 1951, as well as his official repudiation of the Catholic Church. Rita died in 1978.
He formally renounced his membership in the Catholic church in 1954 and joined the Society of Friends. He remarried that same year and his second wife, Janet Hart Sylvester, joined the Quakers with Sylvester.
He didn't publish a novel after 1950. But Sylvester did not completely give up writing; he took up work for the US Information Service for twenty years, retiring in 1971. During that time, he wrote scripts for the Voice of America radio broadcasts and regularly contributed to local newspapers. He spent the last 40 years of his life in the Washington, DC area. His wife, Janet, died on September 20, 1987. In letters to Cort, Sylvester expressed deep grief over the loss of Janet and the difficulty he had after her passing. Sylvester spent the last five years of his life at the Friends Nursing Home in Sandy Spring, Maryland. He died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease on September 26, 1993.

Legacy

Sylvester, though no longer a household name, knew many of the prominent writers of the 20th century. He was a friend and correspondent of Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s; several letters to him from Hemingway appear in the latter's Selected Letters. He also regularly exchanged letters with J. F. Powers and Richard T. Sullivan. By mid-century, he was considered to be a very promising writer in Catholic circles, but he was mostly known for his critical views of the Catholic hierarchy, earning him the ire of many. By the time of his death in 1993, he was largely forgotten.
The University of New Mexico, University Libraries, Center for Southwest Research has a collection of bibliographic material and book reviews by and about Sylvester. However, his complete papers are housed in Georgetown University Library's Special Collections, and include correspondence, manuscripts and three unpublished novels, Watch in the Night, The Young Men, and The Youth of Don Lorenzo.

Novels

Short Stories

Sylvester estimated that he wrote "about 150 short stories" between 1930 and 1955. Over the years, some of his short stories have continued to have life through edited collections such as Prose for Senior Students, 20 Grand: Great American Short Stories, Runner's Literary Companion, and Classic Boxing Stories.
Collected Short Stories
Selected Individual Short Stories