Doctorow, E.L.: Homer & Langley

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Homer & Langley is a fictionalized account of the lives of the Collyer brothers, hoarders who were found dead in their Fifth Avenue home in 1947. One brother had been crushed under their toppled posessions, his body being eaten by rats when it was discovered. The other brother, Homer, who was blind and paralyzed, starved to death after Langley died. Doctorow has changed the story up some. His Homer seems to go blind at an earlier age than the historical brother. And the fictional Collyers live at least into the 1960s. But the author has woven many real-life details into the story as well.

The book is chapterless, the prose uncomplicated. It purports to be an account written in the first person by Homer, who details the adventures the brothers had during their decades of cohabitation: the parties, early on; the attentions of a piano student; outings with gangsters and hippies. At the same time there is a more important development, Langley's hoarding, his descent into paranoia, the brothers' growing isolation from society. The book succeeds in providing Homer with an inner life. We are made to understand the increasingly desperate situation as it might have been experienced by him. The shocking development from gregarious members of society to cloistered madmen makes sense.

Unfortunately, though the story is one I'm happy to have read, Homer & Langley dragged for me. Rarely could I muster the energy to read more than twenty pages at a time, so that the book seemed to stretch out endlessly before me, even when I was nearing the end. A mixed bag, then, at least for me. But other readers may find the book a more exciting read.