Homer & Langley: A Novel [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

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Amazon Exclusive: E.L. Doctorow on Homer & Langley

E. L. Doctorow's novels include The March, City of God, The Waterworks, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, and Billy Bathgate. His work has been published in thirty-two languages. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. E. L. Doctorow lives in New York. Read his exclusive Amazon essay on Homer & Langley:

I was a teenager when the Collyer brothers were found dead in their Fifth Avenue brownstone. Instantly, they were folklore. And so there is the real historical existence of them and the mythological existence--two existences, as with Abe Lincoln, though of a less exalted standing. I didn’t know at the time that I would someday write about them, but even then I felt there was some secret to the Collyers--there was something about them still to be discovered under the piles of things in their house--the bales of newspapers and the accumulated detritus of their lives. Was it only that they were junk-collecting eccentrics? You see that every day in the streets of New York. They had opted out--that was the primary fact. Coming from a well-to-do family, with every advantage, they had locked the door and closed the shutters and absented themselves from the life around them. A major move, as life-transforming as emigration. In fact it was a form of emigration, of leave-taking. But where to? What country was within that house? What would have caused them to become the notorious recluses of Fifth Avenue? As myths, the brothers demanded not research but interpretation, and when a few years ago I was finally moved to do this book, I felt as if writing it was an act of breaking and entering just to see what may have been going on in that house, which really meant getting inside two very interesting minds. And with the first sentence, “I’m Homer, the blind brother,” I was in.

In one sense I think of Homer & Langley as a road novel--as if they are two people traveling together down a road and having adventures, though in fact they are housebound. It turns out that the world will not let them alone--others intrude on their privacy as if it is the road running through them. As for their collecting, I think of them as curators of their life and times, and their house as a museum of all our lives. That is my idea of them, that is my reading of the Collyer myth. I make them to be two brothers who opted out of civilization and pulled the world in after them.--E.L. Doctorow

(Photo © Marion Ettlinger)

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Doctorow, whose literary trophy shelf has got to be overflowing by now, delivers a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers. When WWI hits and the Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley's parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war, with his Columbia education and his godlike immunity to such an ordinary fate as death in a war. Homer, alone and going blind, faces a world considerably dimmed though more deliciously felt by his other senses. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans: inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion, Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects, each eventually abandoned, though he continues to imagine them in increasingly bizarre ways, which he then recites to Homer. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness. Doctorow's achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It's a feat of distillation, vision and sympathy. (Sept.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition, First Printing edition (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400064945
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064946
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #763 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When does eccentricity become utter madness?, September 1, 2009

By	Richard Cumming "richo" (cyberspace) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Homer and Langley Collyer were real people. These two brothers were found dead in their Harlem apartment in 1947. They were pack rats. Or, at least Langley was. When their brownstone revealed a hundred tons of newspapers and junk inside, stuff like an old car, the public was amazed and fascinated. Their story has been the stuff of legend ever since.

Doctorow imagines their story as fiction - he furnishes the telling details about their family - the twists and turns that led them to their lonely fates. They live longer in his version by at least 20 some years. There is a wonderful section where hippies move in with them for a bit. They have love affairs. The blind one, Homer, tells the story and Doctorow allows us to share the visions observed with Homer's supposedly sightless eyes.

Michiko Kakutani panned the book today in the NY Times. That's good. When Michiko hates on a book I often love it. And I loved this one. Doctorow's pithy trip down memory lane with these two loveable oddballs is strangely exhilarating.

Homer is a sweetheart, so gentle. Langley is powerful and brilliant. They make for quite a pair.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only Doctorow could make this story better...., September 3, 2009

By	Robert Busko (Waynesville, NC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I've long been fascinated by Homer and Langley story. I first heard their tale, twisted though it was, on a Ripley's Believe it or Not years ago. Over the years they would find mention in the odd article here and there. I was very happy to see that E. L. Doctorow devoted a book to them, though it is, after-all a fictional account. Still, Homer and Langley is worth reading.

As in all cases when an author turns a true story into a novel, the reader has to be careful about how much they should actually believe. I was completely convinced by Doctorow's treatment of these two sympathetic misfits. He does a masterful job at taking their story and then creating a world that the story can proceed in.

Two brothers inherit the plush 5th Avenue home of their parents and move in. It isn't long before their odd behavior begins to isolate them from their neighbors. During the ensuing years, Homer quietly goes blind relying on Langley to take care of him. Langley does take care of Homer, but also manages to stuff their plush home full of odd items collected over the years. Not only are odd items hidden in the Harlem brownstone, but Langley saves newspapers and magazines galore. For those of you not familiar with the story, you'll need to read Homer and Langley to see what happens.

Doctorow does plays with time just a bit, moving the story a few years. However, within the confines of the tale, time is relative and in this case simply doesn't matter. Doctorow also chooses to let the story play out and end in pretty much the same way the real one did and I congratulate him for that.

One final thought. For some reason, E. L. Doctorow is always a challenge for me to read. I suspect the difficulty is with me and probably related to his style. However, like and addict, I can't resist his novels. I must admit I had less difficulty with Homer and Langley than City of God, The Waterworks, or Billy Bathgate.

Homer and Langley is one of the stranger stories you'll read. Just keep telling yourself, "its based on reality."

I highly recommend.

Peace always.

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Doctorow and Lidz, September 1, 2009

By	avdrdr - See all my reviews

I was so excited about this book that I obtained an advance reader's copy so that I could read it before it was released. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for my excitement to wane. Although the book was well written, I was put off by Doctorow's use of seemingly unending sentences (especially apparent early on) and what felt like a contrived attempt to use Homer and Langley's lives as a means to chronicle the major events of the century. Although I enjoyed Doctorow's characterization of Homer and Langley as individuals, various aspects of their relationship didn't seem to ring true (for example, Homer's willingness to live life according to Langley's rules, no matter how tragic the consequences may be). For readers who are interested in exploring the real-life Homer and Langley, I wholeheartedly recommend Franz Lidz's highly entertaining Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers and My Uncle Arthur, New York's Greatest Hoarders (An Urban Historical).