Customer Reviews

Homer and Langley

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

I was 16 years old and living on the Upper West Side when the Collyer brothers were found dead in their formerly grand townhouse. The newspapers were filled for months with descriptions of all the outlandish items and tons of newspapers they hoarded in their decrepit mansion, so that the police had to enter the house through the roof because the hallways were so tightly blocked.

So I was eager to read this new version of their story, and really wanted to love it. Immediately I was surprised at how short it - 208 pages for such a fertile subject. Doctorow is a much-respected, prizewinning author, so I expected a fully-fleshed-out story of the two well-educated men from a well-off family, who ended up as these poor souls did. Why did they live and die as they did? Sadly, the book seemed very pedestrian and lacking in imagination to me. I also wonder why he placed them about 20 years later in time than their actual lifespans. To include Japanese internment, the postwar years and even VietNam? To give the author an excuse for not imagining what happend to them in what he considered the less-interesting times in which they actually lived?

In 1954, just 7 years after their discovery, the respected author Marcia Davenport's book, "My Brother's Keeper", came out. A fictionalized but fully realized and beautiful novel based on these men and their tragic ending, it gave one of many possible answers to the question everyone asked, "What could have caused it?" She wove a fully rounded story - using but not not citing facts, and giving them full lives and personalities that provided logical reasons for their insatiable collecting of seemingly random stuff: pianos,the car,costumes, newspapers, etc., and inevitably led them in a natural progression to their tragic ending, as she imagined it. An unforgettable book.

I'm glad I read "Homer and Langley" because these brothers continue to fascinate me, but from E.L. Doctorow, who took two-and-a-half years to write this book, I expected much more than this. In the end, there can be no "true" story explaining these now-mythic brothers. It all has to be imagined.

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).

I really wanted to like HOMER & LANGLEY. And I did, to the extent that it was a decent story. But I would have liked it more, had there not been a REAL Homer and Langley, whose strange and sad lives served only as sort of a template for author E.L. Doctorow.

The actual brothers were born in the 1880s, and died a few days apart in 1947. They lived in a large apartment/mansion in Harlem that belonged to their parents, and in this home they managed to accumulate over 130 *TONS* of junk, ranging from pianos and newspapers to bicycles and even a Model-T Ford.

The 'characters' in the novel were born about twenty years later, have been reversed in age (Homer is now the younger one, for reasons that escape me), and survive almost to the 21st century. This latter change afforded Doctorow the opportunity to place H&L into "situations" that were obviously never part of the real brother's lives. Such as hanging out and smoking pot with a group of hippies.

It made for an interesting story, but again, my issue is that the true story needs no embellishment.

For a better look at the real Homer and Langley Collyer, consider Franz Lidz's book GHOSTY MEN. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158234311X/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=) Although Lidz fills half of the book with the story of his uncle Arthur (also a chronic junk-hoarder), at least the facts about Homer and Langley are accurate.

- Jonathan Sabin

I have long had a fascination with the Collyer brothers. I also think E.L. Doctorow is a fabulous writer. Despite knowing "Homer and Langley: A NOVEL" is a work of fiction, I was really looking forward to it. It is a good read, and interesting, but if you want to know the truth about the Collyers, this is not your book. I was very disappointed in the factual changes that were made for unknown reasons.

The true, documented information below was found on the Internet, doing a simple Google search. I do not understand why Doctorow felt an already fascinating, bizaare story needed to contain untruths and unnecessary factual changes. As the saying goes, "Truth is stranger than fiction." And also easier to document.

I knew this was a novel when I began reading it. I knew there would be fabricated conversations, scenarios which didn't happen in real life, and speculation on the men's actual living conditions. Literary license is a wonderful thing, but is unnecessary when the true facts are compelling enough!

So... let's begin:


Doctorow has H&L's parents dying within a few weeks of each other, during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918. Reality: Dr. Collyer died in 1923; Mrs. Collyer in 1929.

Doctorow writes that Langley was the older brother. Reality: Homer Collyer was born on Nov. 6, 1881. Langley was born six years later in 1887.

Both men graduated from Columbia University. Homer, who graduated with the class of 1904, earned an MA, LLB and LLM and practiced admiralty law. Langley took his degree in chemistry and mechanical engineering. He (LANGLEY) never worked for a living, devoting himself to music. Forget the sweet scenario of Homer being escorted daily to the movie house where he played the piano to accompany silent movies. Reality: Langley was the piano player, not Homer.

In 1928-'29, Homer worked in the law office of John McMullen, who would become the family lawyer. Homer then worked for City Title Insurance at 32 Broadway, spending his days researching in the Hall of Records.

In 1933, Homer suffered a stroke, with "hemorrhages in both eyes," and went blind. Reality: He was 52 when he lost his sight, not a young man as stated in the book. This also explains how he was able to maneuver around the house so well, since he'd lived there - as a sighted man - for 52 years.

While emptying the house, authorities found sheets in braille from Homer's *failed attempts* to learn the system. Forget the entire premise of Homer using his braille typewriter(s) to write this very book to a woman he most likely did not meet, considering he never left the mansion after he lost his sight in 1933.

The Model T Ford was found in the basement, not the dining room. This well known fact is strange enough on its own. Why change the location?

It is frequently reported (a fact) that a call was made to police: "There was a dead man in the house at 2078 Fifth Avenue." Other reports say the house was on 128th Street in Harlem, so I assume the house was at the corner of 5th Ave. and 128th, *in Harlem*. Central Park spans the blocks from 59th Street to 110th Street. Homer saying he "stepped across the street into the park" was, again, impossible. In reality, Langley owned a building across the street from their famous brownstone. He planned to remodel it into individual rental apartments but never did. It too was seized for delinquent back taxes. Never mentioned in the book.

Additional facts, easily obtained: Langley, along with his parents, was buried in the Collyer family plot in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn on April 11, not Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, as reported in the book.

Why even bother having them live two decades past their deaths, into the 1960's, hanging out at Central Park smoking pot with hippies, later virtually hosting a youth hostel? Their story is interesting enough, with plenty of factual information available, that embellishments and untruths are not necessary.

Buy the book, enjoy Doctorow's writing style and his sensitivity in dealing with the subjects. Revel in the fact that you're reading it in your nice, tidy house. Just don't expect it to be the true story of two men who suffered from OCD and hoarding in a time before it was understood. I really did enjoy the book and think Doctorow is an excellent writer, I was just dismayed at all the unnecessary factual changes.

E.L. Doctorow's latest novel, Homer & Langley, brings readers into the strange world of the Collyer brothers, who lived eccentric lives in New York. While Doctorow based this novel on the real Collyer brothers and some of the facts of their lives, it is the inner life that Doctorow presents with great skill. Homer is blind, and while Langley has physical sight, his own darkness can often be more desolate than that of his brother. Doctorow's writing led me to pause after finishing some sentences, and return to read them again to savor the experience. Here's one example (p. 193), "There were mental shutters too and mine were closed tight and I turned back to what I could rely on, the filial bond." Some shutters close gradually, and in many respects for both Homer and Langley, their descent into madness came slowly, adjusted each day by another step in a direction that became irreversible over time. Doctorow pulls this off with great skill and efficiency, allowing a reader to become absorbed page by page into Homer & Langley.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

I waited for months for this book to be released. The Collyer brothers have fascinated me ever since I first saw a picture of their home in a photography book about NYC, and I thought this book would shed some light on their situation. Of course I know the book is fiction. I knew it would be a mixture of fact and embellishment.

Still, this could have been better. Doctorow shouldn't have extended the lives of the brothers until Vietnam when they really died soon after WWII, and instead focused on more details of the time that they actually lived. I don't consider this much of a historical novel like I expected it to be. The story is told by Homer, the younger brother, but would have been more interesting if told from a third-person perspective. The hoarding is explained by Langley's experience in WWI and also by alluding to the fact that the Collyer's parents were collectors of things before they died, so you get the sense that the tendency to accumulate things was passed down to the brothers. I don't feel that there was enough of an explanation in this. I know the novel is supposed to be about Homer, but why don't we know more about Langley? Why don't we hear more about the collecting? There is just not enough detail anywhere.

Overall it was slow-moving and not very interesting. A great disappointment to me, since I had never read Doctorow before and was interested in reading Ragtime and World's Fair after this. Now I'm not so sure. The book is well-written, but skips over time much too quickly and manages to be about everything and nothing all at once.

I just re-read 'Ragtime' and remembered how beautifully Doctorow can weave a pastiche of a story into a full-blown tapestry. Unfortunately, this is as major a disappointment as one of the other big books of the season, 'South of Broad.' Both writers are eminently talented, but I think both books, like so many others these days, are simply not being edited anymore. 'Homer & Langley' has a great framework, but the run-on, sometimes incomprehensible sentences are more infuriating than illuminating. We all know that writers like Doctorow can keep many plates spinning at one time; there's no need to remind us on almost every page. If you haven't read anything about these brothers, however, it's certainly worth picking up. The Kindle version is a real value -- and I could look up the arcane words I didn't know right there!

The story of the Collyer brothers should have been a natural for Doctorow. It spans a number of decades in the 20th century from the jazz age to the 60's, it has two eccentric siblings each with his own personality, and the story of their gradual descent into a dark world of fear and decay calls out for a talented writer's interpretation. So why was this so...boring? Perhaps telling their story from the first person perspective of Homer, the brother whose blindness and later infirmities made him a captive, in a way, to his brother Langley, his WWI "shell-shocked" brother was the error. As Homer tries to describe so much without the benefit of sight and stands as a reactor to his brother's constant battles against the world at large, the reader is left waiting for a more compelling narrator to come forward. From fanciful dance parties to an invasion of "flower children" none of this has the ring of truth that is so evident in Doctorow's Ragtime: A Novelor Billy Bathgate: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle). The real story is far more interesting than Doctorow's take.