Henry Winkler’s memoir begins on a Tuesday morning in October 1973, at his first audition for “Happy Days.” He was almost 28 - quite a bit old for a high schooler - and struggling with something he didn’t know had a name.

“Being Henry: The Fonz ... and Beyond,” released Tuesday by Celadon Books, is a breezy, inspirational story of one of Hollywood’s most beloved figures who became an unlikely TV screen icon and later a champion for those with dyslexia.

Winkler’s 245-page book charts his course chronologically from the Fonz to “Barry” - and the frustrating fallow periods in between - painting a portrait of a man trying to overcome a bitter, loveless childhood and a disability that made reading impossibly hard and simply trying to become a better man.

“I was, in my mind, always a little boy,” he writes. “My real self was like a kernel of corn sheathed in yards of concrete - as insulated as the nuclear material at Chernobyl.”

He describes himself at the “Happy Days” audition as “a short Jew from New York City with a unibrow and hair down to my shoulders, confident about next to nothing in my life.” He had graduated from Yale’s drama school and bagged a few roles despite having difficulty reading.

The Fonz almost never happened for him: The fearsome Barry Diller, then head of development for ABC, and future Disney CEO Michael Eisner were skeptical of Winkler getting the part. But writer-creator Garry Marshall saw something.

Later, Winkler dishes, the immense popularity of the Fonz eclipsed anyone else on the show and the network secretly approached him with the idea of spinning off a show or changing the name to “Fonzie’s Happy Days.” Winkler refused.