Synopsis
The real-life Homer and Langley Collyer were two wildly eccentric aristocratic brothers who lived together in a three-story Harlem mansion surrounded by 103 tons of avidly collected trash (including, among other oddities, the full chassis of a Model T Ford). National Book Award-winning author E.L. Doctorow has taken this outlandish tale as the inspiration for his novel, narrated by the blind Homer, who comes to rely on his brilliant but war-damaged brother Langley for survival. Despite the Collyer's constant attempts to hide from the world, Doctorow uses the brothers as a means to describe the shifting forces of American history outside their junk-shuttered windows. Indeed, Langley has become convinced that history repeats itself, and by relentlessly hoarding newspapers, he will eventually be able to predict the future. A grand, mad, and deeply touching tale, HOMER & LANGLEY creates an unforgettable portrait of two men lost on the fringes of society.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-09-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 208 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 18.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
A tale inspired by a true story finds the blind Homer Collyer closeted within a once-grand Fifth Avenue mansion with his damaged brother and remembering a life marked by colorful characters, political events, and technological achievements. By the National Book Award-winning author of Billy Bathgate.
Industry Reviews
"Wizardly Doctorow presents an ingenious, haunting odyssey that unfolds within a labyrinth built out of the detritus of war and excess." (starred review)
(07/01/2009)
"[A] beautiful and haunting novel....Doctorow is clear and compassionate in detailing [the brothers'] stunted emotions and phobias, and he creates a surprising kind of suspense as the stuff piles up, and the house begins to close around them into a big, messy tomb....Doctorow's writing is so lithe, the book easily sustains all of its thematic musings - about technology and history and consumer culture, even the novelist as kind of housebound Quixote."
(08/30/2009)
"[B]uoyant and entertaining....E. L. Doctorow...[is] a writer of dazzling gifts and boundless imaginative energy....In HOMER & LANGLEY, [he] has evoked an American folk-myth writ small, a touching double portrait of men whom social background and class privilege could not protect from extinction."
(09/07/2009)
"If the novel succeeds in making us care about the Collyers, the reason is Mr. Doctorow's own whiplash use of language, a daring, poetic meditation in prose of the kind that is familiar from his earlier novels....The author presents both men as heroic pioneers who discover their own inner music and logic, choosing to remove themselves from all the bitter debris and turmoil beyond the walls of their mansion."
(09/04/2009)
"[A]n intriguing character study and an elegantly written exploration of isolation....Doctorow's great success here is in reaching past the joke to make us feel his anguish."
(09/06/2009)
"The achievement of Doctorow's masterly , compassionate double portrait is that it succeeds for 200 pages in suspending the snigger, elevating the Collyers beyond caricature and turning them into creatures of their times instead of figures of fun."
(09/13/2009)
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