Enjoyable and interesting story. Not always factually accurate (it is historical fiction after all), but relates the relationship of the brothers and the odd things they did. ( )

After reading up a bit on the Collyer brothers, I changed my assessment of this novel. I don't take issue with the liberties of timeline and birth order, but I don't understand why Doctorow did it. Sure, the journey through the 50s-70s was interesting and the Collier brothers would no doubt have been an interesting lens for such times, but why make Homer the pianist and the younger brother? Admittedly, I knew little about the Collyer brothers before reading the novel and I think that added to my enjoyment. What struck me is that it is a story about stories in some sense. For much of the world, there were mysteries behind those doors of that brownstone that were sensationalized, yet fantastically truthful. What Doctorow does, however, is digs through the labels of "disorders" and reveals a relationship between two people. Two secluded brothers in history are perfect fodder for fictionalization and maybe that is their legacy--to generate stories. There's a safety in fiction, especially now that they are gone. But Doctorow asks us--with this story--to look beyond all in our present that is eccentric and "unknown" to find the touchstones. Maybe I'm giving him more credit than I should, but that was my takeaway from the book. ( )

Ispirata a un famoso fatto di cronaca della New York del primo Novecento, la storia dei fratelli Homer e Langley Collyer assume nella rivisitazione di Doctorow, maestro nell'amalgamare avvenimenti reali con episodi romanzati, i contorni del mito. Homer, il fratello cieco, e Langley, tornato semifolle dalla Grande Guerra, sono due rampolli di una famiglia benestante che nel corso dei decenni trasformeranno il loro palazzo in un delirante ricettacolo di ciarpame, dove vivranno come reclusi fino a rimanere sepolti sotto le tonnellate di spazzatura da loro stessi accumulata. Questi personaggi tragici ed emblematici, che hanno perfino dato il nome alla cosiddetta "sindrome di Collyer", diventano la metafora di un mondo e lo specchio di un lungo periodo della storia americana. Homer e Langley, benché rinchiusi nella loro folle utopia, saranno infatti testimoni di tutti gli avvenimenti fondamentali di quegli anni, dalle guerre ai movimenti politici, dal progresso tecnologico a una serie di personaggi indimenticabili, immigrati, gangster, musicisti jazz, hippy. ( )

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.
( )

Based on fact about the Collyer brothers living in a brownstone on 5th Avenue in New York in the 1940s and their hoarding. ( )