Shut Up And Smile

Harry Bernstein at his home in Brick, New Jersey. (Mike Mergen for The New York Times)

At 96, Harry Bernstein finds literary success with his memoir

By the time Harry Bernstein was 24, he had published a short story in a magazine beside works by William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein. That was 1934.


It took seven decades before he achieved literary success again, this time at 96 with a memoir, "The Invisible Wall," about Bernstein's early childhood on a poverty-stricken street in an English mill town, where Jews and Christians were strictly divided. Read more.