Harry Sylvester

Harry Ambrose Sylvester (January 19, 1908 – September 26, 1993) 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.

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 an 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 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.

In 1936, he wed Rita Ryall Davis of Manhattan.

They had four children together, John, Anne, Joan, and Clare.

The most popular of his novels were Dearly Beloved (1942), Dayspring (1945), and Moon Gaffney (1947).

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.

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.

He was asked to turn John Steinbeck's script for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) into a short story.

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 (or the Penitente Brotherhood) and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism through the process.

The fictional town in which the story takes place, Tarale, is based upon the real town of Taos, New Mexico.

The novel also presents a fictionalized version of Mabel Dodge Luhan and her community of artists, whom Bain repudiates in favor of the provincial Catholics.

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.

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.

Dayspring was Sylvester's first novel to attract international attention; the literary publishing house, Rich & Cowan, released an edition of the book in 1949.

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.