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Homer & Langley: A Novel Paperback – September 7, 2010

by E.L. Doctorow (Author)

1,068 ratings

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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, THE KANSAS CITY STAR, AND BOOKLIST

Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers—wars, political movements, technological advances—and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston Globe

“Masterly.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Doctorow paints on a sweeping historical canvas, imagining the Collyer brothers as witness to the aspirations and transgressions of 20th century America; yet this book’s most powerfully moving moments are the quiet ones, when the brothers relish a breath of cool morning air, and each other’s tragically exclusive company.”— O: The Oprah Magazine

“A stately, beautiful performance with great resonance . . . What makes this novel so striking is that it joins both blindness and insight, the sensual world and the world of the mind, to tell a story about the unfolding of modern American life that we have never heard in exactly this (austere and lovely) way before.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Wondrous . . . inspired . . . darkly visionary and surprisingly funny.” —The New York Review of Books

“Cunningly panoramic . . . Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that cpature the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness.”—Elle

“Following the panoramic scope of The March, Doctorow creates a microcosmic and mythic tale of compulsion, alienation, and dark metamorphosis inspired by the famously eccentric Collyer brothers of New York City. . . . Doctorow has Homer, who is blind, narrate with deadpan humor and spellbinding precision. . . . Over the decades, people come and go–lovers, a gangster, a jazz musician, a flock of hippies, but finally Homer and Langley are irrevocably alone, prisoners in their fortress of rubbish, trapped in their warped form of brotherly love. Wizardly Doctorow presents an ingenious, haunting odyssey that unfolds within a labyrinth built out of the detritus of war and excess.”–Booklist (starred review)

“A sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers. . . . 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.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Doctorow works his usual magic in bringing history to life and larding it with disturbing implications. . . . As with much of Doctorow’s masterful fiction, Homer & Langley turns the American dream on its ear, offering us a glimpse of the dark side of our national—and personal—eccentricities.”—BookPage

About the Author

E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, City of God, The March, Homer & Langley, and Andrew’s Brain. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/ Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction. In 2014 he was honored with the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I’m Homer, the blind brother, I didn't lose my sight all at once, it was like the movies, a slow fade-out. When I was told what was happening I was interested to measure it, I was in my late teens then, keen on everything. What I did this particular winter was to stand back from the lake in Central Park where they did all their ice skating and see what I could see and couldn’t see as a day-by-day thing. The houses over to Central Park West went first, they got darker as if dissolving into the dark sky until I couldn’t make them out, and then the trees began to lose their shape, and then finally, this was toward the end of the season, maybe it was late February of that very cold winter, and all I could see were these phantom shapes of the ice skaters floating past me on a field of ice, and then the white ice, that last light, went gray and then altogether black, and then all my sight was gone though I could hear clearly the scoot scut of the blades on the ice, a very satisfying sound, a soft sound though full of intention, a deeper tone than you’d expect made by the skate blades, perhaps for having sounded the resonant basso of the water under the ice, scoot scut, scoot scut. I would hear someone going someplace fast, and then the twirl into that long scurratch as the skater spun to a stop, and then I laughed too for the joy of that ability of the skater to come to a dead stop all at once, going along scoot scut and then scurratch.

Of course I was sad too, but it was lucky this happened to me when I was so young with no idea of being disabled, moving on in my mind to my other capacities like my exceptional hearing, which I trained to a degree of alertness that was almost visual. Langley said I had ears like a bat and he tested that proposition, as he liked to subject everything to review. I was of course familiar with our house, all four storeys of it, and could navigate every room and up and down the stairs without hesitation, knowing where everything was by memory. I knew the drawing room, our father’s study, our mother’s sitting room, the dining room with its eighteen chairs and the walnut long table, the butler’s pantry and the kitchens, the parlor, the bedrooms, I remembered how many of the carpeted steps there were between the floors, I didn’t even have to hold on to the railing, you could watch me and if you didn’t know me you wouldn’t know my eyes were dead. But Langley said the true test of my hearing capacity would come when no memory was involved, so he shifted things around a bit, taking me into the music room, where he had earlier rolled the grand piano around to a different corner and had put the Japanese folding screen with the herons in water in the middle of the room, and for good measure twirled me around in the doorway till my entire sense of direction was obliterated, and I had to laugh because don’t you know I walked right around that folding screen and sat down at the piano exactly as if I knew where he had put it, as I did, I could hear surfaces, and I said to Langley, A blind bat whistles, that’s the way he does it, but I didn’t have to whistle, did I? He was truly amazed, Langley is the older of us by two years, and I have always liked to impress him in whatever way I could. At this time he was already a college student in his first year at Columbia. How do you do it? he said. This is of scientific interest. I said: I feel shapes as they push the air away, or I feel heat from things, you can turn me around till I’m dizzy, but I can still tell where the air is filled in with something solid.

And there were other compensations as well. I had tutors for my education and then, of course, I was comfortably enrolled in the West End Conservatory of Music, where I had been a student since my sighted years. My skill as a pianist rendered my blindness acceptable in the social world. As I grew older, people spoke of my gallantry, and the girls certainly liked me. In our New York society of those days, one parental means of ensuring a daughter’s marriage to a suitable husband was to warn her, from birth it seemed, to watch out for men and to not quite trust them. This was well before the Great War, when the days of the flapper and women smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis were in the unimaginable future. So a handsome young blind man of reputable family was particularly attractive insofar as he could not, even in secret, do anything untoward. His helplessness was very alluring to a woman trained since birth, herself, to be helpless. It made her feel strong, in command, it could bring out her sense of pity, it could do lots of things, my sightlessness. She could express herself, give herself to her pent-up feelings, as she could not safely do with a normal fellow. I dressed very well, I could shave myself with my straight razor and never nick the skin, and at my instructions the barber kept my hair a bit longer than it was being worn in that day, so that when at some gathering I sat at the piano and played the Appassionata, for instance, or the Revolutionary Étude, my hair would fly about—I had a lot of it then, a good thick mop of brown hair parted in the middle and coming down each side of my head. Franz Lisztian hair is what it was. And if we were sitting on a sofa and no one was about, a young lady friend might kiss me, touch my face and kiss me, and I, being blind, could put my hand on her thigh without seeming to have that intention, and so she might gasp, but would leave it there for fear of embarrassing me.

I should say that as a man who never married I have been particularly sensitive to women, very appreciative in fact, and let me admit right off that I had a sexual experience or two in this time I am describing, this time of my blind city life as a handsome young fellow not yet twenty, when our parents were still alive and had many soirees, and entertained the very best people of the city in our home, a monumental tribute to late Victorian design that would be bypassed by modernity—as for instance the interior fashions of our family friend Elsie de Wolfe, who, after my father wouldn’t allow her to revamp the entire place, never again set foot in our manse—and which I always found comfortable, solid, dependable, with its big upholstered pieces, or tufted Empire side chairs, or heavy drapes over the curtains on the ceiling-to-floor windows, or medieval tapestries hung from gilt poles, and bow-windowed bookcases, thick Persian rugs, and standing lamps with tasseled shades and matching chinois amphora that you could almost step into…it was all very eclectic, being a record of sorts of our parents’ travels, and cluttered it might have seemed to outsiders, but it seemed normal and right to us and it was our legacy, Langley’s and mine, this sense of living with things assertively inanimate, and having to walk around them.

Our parents went abroad for a month every year, sailing away on one ocean liner or another, waving from the railing of some great three- or four-stacker—the Carmania, the Mauretania, the Neuresthania—as she pulled away from the dock. They looked so small up there, as small as I felt with my hand in the tight hand of my nurse, and the ship’s horn sounding in my feet and the gulls flying about as if in celebration, as if something really fine was going on. I used to wonder what would happen to my father’s patients while he was away, for he was a prominent women’s doctor and I worried that they would get sick and maybe die, waiting for him to return.

Even as my parents were running around England, or Italy, or Greece or Egypt, or wherever they were, their return was presaged by things in crates delivered to the back door by the Railway Express Company: ancient Islamic tiles, or rare books, or a marble water fountain, or busts of Romans with no noses or missing ears, or antique armoires with their fecal smell.

And then, finally, with great huzzahs, there, after I’d almost forgotten all about them, would be Mother and Father themselves stepping out of the cab in front of our house, and carrying in their arms such treasures as hadn’t preceded them. They were not entirely thoughtless parents for there were always presents for Langley and me, things to really excite a boy, like an antique toy train that was too delicate to play with, or a gold-plated hairbrush.

we did some traveling as well, my brother and I, being habitual summer campers in our youth. Our camp was in Maine on a coastal plateau of woods and fields, a good place to appreciate Nature. The more our country lay under blankets of factory smoke, the more the coal came rattling up from the mines, the more our massive locomotives thundered through the night and big harvesting machines sliced their way through the crops and black cars filled the streets, blowing their horns and crashing into one another, the more the American people worshipped Nature. Most often this devotion was relegated to the children. So there we were living in primitive cabins in Maine, boys and girls in adjoining camps.

I was in the fullness of my senses, then. My legs were limber and my arms strong and sinewy and I could see the world with all the unconscious happiness of a fourteen-year-old. Not far from the camps, on a bluff overlooking the ocean, was a meadow profuse with wild blackberry bushes, and one afternoon numbers of us were there plucking the ripe blackberries and biting into their wet warm pericarped pulp, competing with flights of bumblebees, as we raced them from one bush to another and stuffed the berries into our mouths till the juice dripped down our chins. The air was thickened with floating communities of gnats that rose and fell, expanding and contracting, like astronomical events. And the sun shone on our heads, and behind us at the foot of the cliff were the black and silver rocks patiently taking and breaking apart the waves and, beyond that, the glittering sea radiant with shards of sun, and all of it in my clear eyes as I turned in triumph to this one girl with whom I had bonded, Eleanor was her name, and stretched my arms wide and bowed as the magician who had made it for her. And somehow when the others moved on we lingered conspiratorially behind a thicket of blackberry bushes until the sound of them was gone and we were there unattended, having broken camp rules, and so self-defined as more grown-up than anyone believed, though we grew reflective walking back, holding hands without even realizing it.

Is there any love purer than this, when you don’t even know what it is? She had a moist warm hand, and dark eyes and hair, this Eleanor. Neither of us was embarrassed by the fact that she was a good head taller than me. I remember her lisp, the way her tongue tip was caught between her teeth when she pronounced her S’s. She was not one of the socially self-assured ones who abounded in the girls’ side of the camp. She wore the uniform green shirt and gray bloomers they all wore but she was something of a loner, and in my eyes she seemed distinguished, fetching, thoughtful, and in some state of longing analogous to my own—for what, neither of us could have said. This was my first declared affection and so serious that even Langley, who lived in another cabin with his age group, did not tease me. I wove a lanyard for Eleanor and cut and stitched a model birch bark canoe for her.

Oh, but this is a sad tale I have wandered into. The boys’ and girls’ camps were separated by a stand of woods through the length of which was a tall wire fence of the kind to keep animals out and so it was a major escapade at night for the older boys to climb over or dig under this fence and challenge authority by running through the girls’ camp shouting and dodging pursuing counselors, and banging on cabin doors so as to elicit delighted shrieks. But Eleanor and I breached the fence to meet after everyone was asleep and to wander about under the stars and talk philosophically about life. And that’s how it happened that on one warm August night we found ourselves down the road a mile or so at a lodge dedicated like our camp to getting back to nature. But it was for adults, for parents. Attracted by a flickering light in the otherwise dark manse we tiptoed up on the porch and through the window saw a shocking thing, what in later time would be called a blue movie. Its licentious demonstration was taking place on a portable screen something like a large window shade. In the reflected light we could see in silhouette an audience of attentive adults leaning forward in their chairs and sofas. I remember the sound of the projector not that far from the open window, the whirring sound it made, like a field of cicadas. The woman on the screen, naked but for a pair of high-heeled shoes, lay on her back on a table and the man, also naked, stood holding her legs under the knees so that she was proffered to receive his organ, of which he made sure first to exhibit its enormity to his audience. He was an ugly bald skinny man with just that one disproportionate feature to distinguish him. As he shoved himself again and again into the woman she was given to pulling her hair while her legs kicked up convulsively, each shoe tip jabbing the air in rapid succession, as if she’d been jolted with an electric current. I was rapt—horrified, but also thrilled to a level of unnatural feeling that was akin to nausea. I do not wonder now that with the invention of moving pictures, their pornographic possibilities were immediately understood.

Did my friend gasp, did she tug at my hand to pull me away? If she did I would not have noticed. But when I was sufficiently recovered in my senses I turned and she was nowhere to be seen. I ran back the way we had come, and on this moonlit night, a night as black and white as the film, I could see no one on the road ahead of me. The summer had some weeks to go but my friend Eleanor never spoke to me again, or even looked my way, a decision I accepted as an accomplice, by gender, of the male performer. She was right to run from me, for on that night romance was unseated in my mind and in its place was enthroned the idea that sex was something you did to them, to all of them including poor shy tall Eleanor. It is a puerile illusion, hardly worthy of a fourteen-year-old mind, yet it persists among grown men even as they meet women more avidly copulative than they.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; Reprint edition (September 7, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812975634
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812975635
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 0.51 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #582,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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E. L. Doctorow

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E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career [places] him . . . in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.

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Customers say

Customers find this novel a compelling read with masterful language and well-developed characters. The story is based on true events, with one customer describing it as a concise fictionalization of 20th century America. The pacing receives mixed reactions, with several customers noting the narrative sometimes lacks speed. The book evokes mixed emotions, with customers describing it as a sad story.

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Reading quality Storytelling Writing quality Character development Sadness Pacing

103 customers mention "Reading quality"103 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and fun to read, with one customer describing it as a truly lively account.

"...The other was Langley Collyer, imaginative, brilliant, compassionate, with great intelligence, impractical in their strategies to confront the system..." Read more

"...Their story is interesting enough, with plenty of factual information available, that embellishments and untruths are not necessary...." Read more

"...They lived and died together. This book is a great read. It helps all of us understand the nature of hoarding...." Read more

"...Their story is no doubt a fascinating one - how did two men who had every advantage in life fall to such a low point?..." Read more

78 customers mention "Storytelling"64 positive14 negative

Customers praise the novel's hauntingly eloquent storytelling, noting it is based on true events, with one customer describing it as a concise fictionalization of 20th century America.

"...The other was Langley Collyer, imaginative, brilliant, compassionate, with great intelligence, impractical in their strategies to confront the system..." Read more

"...He did this beautifully in this book. Here are some lines I thought particularly beautiful:..." Read more

"...away the fact that the book contains beautiful writing and many poignant moments particularly Homer's brief encounters with women...." Read more

"...Mostly, however, the compassion and sensitivity with which Doctorow presents the brothers, along with Homer's unique voice, make this novel a joy..." Read more

56 customers mention "Writing quality"53 positive3 negative

Customers praise the writing quality of the book, noting its masterful use of language and well-crafted storytelling.

"...This novel has a well-armed prose, poetic phrases laden with nostalgia, but without fuss or cry, rather with the acceptance of time...." Read more

"...I really did enjoy the book and think Doctorow is an excellent writer, I was just dismayed at all the unnecessary factual changes." Read more

"...He used his ability as a masterful writer to create a world around these characters...." Read more

"...Still one can not take away the fact that the book contains beautiful writing and many poignant moments particularly Homer's brief encounters with..." Read more

11 customers mention "Character development"11 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, particularly noting the well-crafted portrayal of the brothers.

"...Doctorow has taken 2 unusual and eccentric characters, and given them depth and characterization that seems realistic...." Read more

"...I do not deem it one of Doctorow's finest works, the characters were compelling enough that I looked forward to returning to the novel each time I..." Read more

"...Let me say, I loved the writing, I loved the story, I loved the characters, I laughed out loud in places and I felt very, very sorry for these two..." Read more

"...The author swept me along on a journey with very unique characters, slices of societal reactions in various periods of history, and humanity at its..." Read more

16 customers mention "Sadness"11 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the sadness in the book, with several describing it as a sad story.

"...you are unfamiliar with the brothers' story, you will find this a heartbreaking and illuminating read...." Read more

"...story of the infamous Collyer brothers, is none-the-less moving and sad." Read more

"...It's entertaining and sad, but turns these men, who could so easily become ciphers, into real people." Read more

"The writer's style is very, very good, but the subject matter is somewhat depressing...." Read more

22 customers mention "Pacing"6 positive16 negative

Customers find the pacing of the book unsatisfactory, with multiple reviews noting that the story sometimes lacks speed.

"...Overall, this book was a bit of a disappointment, it was not as compelling a story as Ragtime or Billy Bathgate, but nonetheless it was a very..." Read more

"...This narrative rhythm is passive, quiet, not exciting, and some readers may miss that. I did at times...." Read more

"...This is a very fast read. Doctorow's wit is sharp and abundant, this book is funny! This book, in 200 pages, sweeps through 80 years of history...." Read more

"...It started off well, but I'm afraid it stalled midway and when the novelty of the blind man and the pack-rat brother wore off it became rather..." Read more

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Rafael J Salin-Pascual
The hoarder inside oneself
Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2010
Verified Purchase

Anglo psychiatric classifications call him "hoarder" accumulators. But for the vast majority of other human beings, especially those living with them, those things that they collect are garbage, so they are trash collectors or people who may save things, even if you realize the little use to that. The truth is that everyone has some of that, at least one drawer, one closet, one room or several of these, and sometimes apartments or houses that deal to store, whatever assume it is helpful, or we can recycle, or as Langley project's that had in mind to do something useful someday.
This is the "breeding ground" on which Doctorow's novel "Homer & Langley a novel " is made off. However that is based on two historical figures of Harlem in New York USA.
The loneliness at the stage of biological decline is like going blind, deaf and mute. However, if you are already blind, the adaptation of to the lack or weakness in the systems that put you in touch with the outside world will intensifies and be more efficient, and even if you are losing some of them that is not the existential catastrophe if not adaptation happens or if you lose them right away or without having a brother like Langley. The two brothers in Doctorow's novel are: Homer Collyer, the blind, as the Greek poet, and he is the narrator with eyeless vision of those two special lives. The other was Langley Collyer, imaginative, brilliant, compassionate, with great intelligence, impractical in their strategies to confront the system, where he was committed to make David against the Goliath Cyclops, arising in every period of their lives. These two people who seems to belong to the nineteenth century gentlemen, they were engage in an anti-establishment war, even before the great protest movements that characterized the second half of the twentieth century: young hippies, the Afro-American and women, sexual diversities and so on. So in this way and were still alive, authorities posthumous.
The accumulation compulsive or "hoardering" is the reason for the stocks of everything also Langley meticulous care of his blind brother, tons of newsprint, uniforms and military belongings, four or five television, a Ford "T" inside at one of the dining rooms, seven pianos, boxes, with and without objects, books, cockroaches, mice and rats, and cats to balance the mansion and its micro - ecosystem. Homer is the chronicler of both their lives.
The despair over the death of their parents (Spanish Flu), the brother who has been enlisted in the First World War, and is gassed with mustard vapors. Without any news about him , Homer and blind, makes this kick that obscure object of survival called resilience. Even when the news was received by the inhabitants of the mansion Collyer, which were Homer and the servants, who are like family, mentioned that Langley was lost in combat. That thee hope or intuition is very strong and plays the role of promoter of the denial, and that he. Because, Homer cannot accept his brother dead. Indeed, a few months Langley is back to home with a chronic cough and an anarchist ideology well planted.
The lives of two brothers, becomes a framework for observation, the history of the United States, in the first half of the twentieth century. It highlights the deep affection they both profess. By Homer, a filial respect that it is still critical, but with total confidence, towards that figure, not only is the older brother but also his guide existential.
Homer is writing the story of his brother, but in his mind he is also talking about himself a biography to a single person, his muse Jacqueline, of which only remembers the voice with Francophile accent, and the special time in his life, in which he was saved from being run over across from his house by crossing to "Central Park". Even though over the years, he doubts that she may exist, and the likelihood of a trap in his memory it is not ruled out. It is this kind of reflection on what may be the real reality, or the distortion that makes our brain of that the novel may well be inscribed on the newly developed genre of neuro novels.
Langley is who lead whatever action is needed, he is the one who read every day, all editions of newspapers published in New York. The love of both brothers is sublime between them, and also they are very interested in women although severe limitations may happen. So they were very active from the cabaret girls and nightclubs, women that help at home, hippies and some platonic loves, like the unforgettable from Homer to Elizabeth, a student of piano, which serves as guide in unsound cinemas in where Homer plays the piano. Is this the muse, who whispers into the ears and heart will inform him what kind of scenes and musical plays were possible to interpret. And finally, with Jacqueline, the Frenchwoman who heads the senile infatuation.
The brothers live on the Day of Victory of World War II, the expressions of opposition against Vietnam War and subsequent wars. In his contact with the guys from the decade of the sixties and seventies, there is an immediate acceptance and integration, given its marginality whiles his subversive anti-establishment status. The brothers come to realize from its labyrinth of paper and paperboard, of meanness, of his fellows from the neighborhood that is becoming Harlem.
This novel has a well-armed prose, poetic phrases laden with nostalgia, but without fuss or cry, rather with the acceptance of time. Doctorow's novel was inspired by two real people of the same name, but whose biographies are different in the time that they lived, and in the severe degree of isolation of the original two brothers. In the case of real Collyer, they were not very sociable. The other, the neighbors of the two royal brothers were the torturers, the morbid, those who wanted to take the property, even children who trained breaking the windows of the house in summer, until the fines and penalties for law enforcement authorities , firefighters, the mayor of the city.
The brothers were increasingly locking in confined spaces, with runners whose walls were magazines, newspapers, books and boxes without utility, which underpin the maze that finally caught them. The fear of humanity, which they live, filled them full of shock, so that gradually they were propping her confinement, and they never were able to see the outside live again.

On the Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, it has been speculated and written in abundance. Franz Lidz, in his book about them and also on its four uncle "Ghostly Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders" begins with an overwhelming. All the arts is the same -- an attempt to fill an empty space "Which is a beautiful and euphemistic representation of something that is much more complex.
If one were to describe briefly the behavior of these people we could say, "Meet strange things, which others call trash, but for them that are symptoms and symbolism indicates that summarizes aspects from the utility to mysterious connections with the homesickness. These are simple beings collector's motley things with personal symbolism, some of which even can be called art.

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C. Nickels
Confused with the need for distortion of facts. I KNOW it's a novel!
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2009
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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.

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Françoise Mouriaux
N'accumulez pas!
Reviewed in France on June 3, 2012
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Ce roman parle d'un fait divers authentique: Deux frères sont morts à New-York d'avoir accumulé trop de choses au cours des années dans leur appartement!Passionnant!

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Briar Rose
Original and thought provoking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2020
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Great book - original and thought provoking - very individual style and quick to read - great highs and real lows too

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fairity
Lesenswert!
Reviewed in Germany on February 20, 2020
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Eine berührende Geschichte basierend auf historischen Tatsachen.
Der reale Hintergrund: zwei sehr wohlhabende, skurrile Brüder ( die Collyers), die bis 1947 in einer Stadtvilla am Rande des Central Parks in New York lebten.
Im Buch wird ihre seltsame Geschichte aus der Perspektive des Älteren sehr lebendig erzählt. Zwei liebenswert, schrullige Typen, die ich zu gerne kennengelernt hätte.
Definitiv ein Roman, den ich unbedingt in meinem Bücherschrank stehen haben will und mit Sicherheit ein zweites Mal lesen werde...

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queen esther
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2015
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not one of his best but a good read. He's a fine writer.

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B. Preuschoff
Auf leisen Füßen zum mehrfachen Nachdenken...
Reviewed in Germany on November 21, 2012
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...und erstaunt sein.

Das Thema ist sicher eines, daß einem amerikanischen Publikum näher liegt als einem europäischen, da vermutlich hier nicht viele die Geschichte der Gebrüder Collyer kennen. Es lohnt sich daher für den deutschen Leser, kurz Wikipedia zu bemühen, um sich den ganzen Kontext zu verschaffen.

Der Roman kommt leise daher, ganz leise: Der Erzählstil ist flüssig, dabei nie flach; er nimmt einen mit wie ein leiser Wasserstrom, eh man sich'S versieht, sind schon wieder zehn Seiten rum. Die Erzählungen aus der Sicht von Homer, dem erblindeten Bruder, der sich zurückerinnert, wie alles kam, sind spannend, lustig, vielseitig und bieten immer neue Facetten und Erlebnisse, die das Buch zu einem Pageturner machen.

Irgendwann kommt man jedoch zu dem Punkt, daß das irgendwie zu einfach geht, daß das zwar eine nette Erzählung ist, aber nicht mehr. Und genau in diesem Moment beginnt die Erzählung, sich zu wenden - und es wird klar, daß aus Sicht der Hauptpersonen Homer und Langley tatsächlich auch nichts Großes passiert! Für sie ist alles klar, simpel und nachvollziehbar. Erst die Außensicht, und dabei vor allem die der Medien, haben den Brüdern Collyer ihre traurige Berühmtheit als ertse "Messies" der Geschichte verschafft. Und welche Sicht mag denn nun richtig sein...mit dieser Frage entläßt der Autor den Leser am Ende des Buches. Und das verleiht dem Buch einen ganz besonderen Reiz in meinen Augen. Es beantwortet keine Fragen, es stellt sie.

Ein Buch, das seine Wirkung erst im Nachhinein und vor allem erst bei genauerem Nachdenken des Lesers entfaltet. Wunderbar gedacht und genau dafür richtig geschrieben. Spannend auch, weil kein alltägliches Thema; mal etwas anderes.
Absolut zu empfehlen - vier Sterne von mir nur, weil "Der Sturm" noch etwas spannender war - aber das ist persönliche Geschmacksache.

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Homer & Langley: A Novel Paperback – September 7, 2010

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5.0 out of 5 stars The hoarder inside oneself

4.0 out of 5 stars Confused with the need for distortion of facts. I KNOW it's a novel!

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars N'accumulez pas!

5.0 out of 5 stars Original and thought provoking

5.0 out of 5 stars Lesenswert!

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars

4.0 out of 5 stars Auf leisen Füßen zum mehrfachen Nachdenken...

The hoarder inside oneself

Confused with the need for distortion of facts. I KNOW it's a novel!

N'accumulez pas!

Original and thought provoking

Lesenswert!

Four Stars

Auf leisen Füßen zum mehrfachen Nachdenken...