Homer & Langley

They were found dead amongst their collected junk - bales of newspapers, crates, bicycles, worn clothing and guns, to name of few - the Collyer brothers are iconic American pack rats that spark imagination within us. What went on behind those shuttered windows, the booby traps and bolted doors? What lives did these living ghosts live? What drove them to collect articles of junk to store in their homes?

E. L. Doctorow, author of Lives of Poets, takes a creative crack at the secret lives of the Collyer brothers through the eyes (no pun intended) of the blind, younger brother Homer.

I first learned of Doctorow's masterpiece, Homer & Langley, through a piece written in Esquire entitled "Two Great New Books on a New Kind of Apocalypse." The review covered both Doctorow's novel and Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem, stating:

Both novels make a reader ache for a city long gone. But they also let us know that the end of the world as we know it may only be the end of the world as we know it. What's truly scary is not that life will end but that it will continue in ever reduced circumstances.

It is in these circumstances that we find the Collyer brothers as Homer pounds away at the Braille typewriter Langley obtained for him, chronicling the story of their lives. Here are two men who have been through it all. Older brother Langley was returned back from the Great War as damaged goods only to learn that their parents had died during his abscence and his younger brother has taken up with a thieving maid. As the world ended for them, their lives continued on as relics from the past.

They go through life as ghosts of the past, becoming more transparent and phantom like with each passing year. Failing to establish any significant human connection with those around them, they hide away as older brother Langley begins to collect newspapers in order to prove a theory that the world works on replacements (i.e. children are replacements to their parents). Oddly enough, it isn't until the end that the question arises: Who will replace them?

Naturally, Doctorow takes historical liberties with his novel. In reality, Homer was the older of the two and they both died in 1947, whereas Doctorow extends their lives by at least 30 years. The book is superb, being the first novel I ever read by the author. It has the ability to wrap you in its webs, imagine the world that these brothers lived in and leaves trembling in its narration.