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A review by meadowbat
Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
3.0
Doctorow's attempt to get inside the minds of the Collyer brothers, whose hoarding case made headlines half a century before TLC started sifting through junky suburban homes, is extremely readable but not quite successful. In this fictionalized account, WWI vet Langley is obsessed with creating a "newspaper for all time," with platonic ideals of the stories that regularly cycle through front pages. He stashes the house with every paper he can get his hands on, not to mention "replacements" for other items: typewriters, pianos, even a Model T that takes up residence in the dining room. His blind brother Homer narrates--trusting, romantic, tragically passive.
The result at times is a kind of twisted Forrest Gump, in which the brothers barricade themselves from a harsh world only to have history bust through the doors in the form of Prohibition-era gangsters and Vietnam-era hippies. But whatever connections Doctorow is trying to make about the cycles of history don't quite take hold for me. Meanwhile, the impact of the hoarding is downplayed. If you Google pictures of the Collyer brothers' home, you will see that in such an environment, precarious walls of rat-infested STUFF would quickly become the only thing about you. Yet the brothers' physical surroundings remain a supporting character, not completely functional on a symbolic or literal level.
The result at times is a kind of twisted Forrest Gump, in which the brothers barricade themselves from a harsh world only to have history bust through the doors in the form of Prohibition-era gangsters and Vietnam-era hippies. But whatever connections Doctorow is trying to make about the cycles of history don't quite take hold for me. Meanwhile, the impact of the hoarding is downplayed. If you Google pictures of the Collyer brothers' home, you will see that in such an environment, precarious walls of rat-infested STUFF would quickly become the only thing about you. Yet the brothers' physical surroundings remain a supporting character, not completely functional on a symbolic or literal level.