In the Gilded Age how did one stave off loneliness and emotional despair when they were privileged, intelligent, and as rich as Roosevelt, but without a good therapist and a prescription for Zoloft?
Well, if you were the infamously fascinating Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, you made some attempts at normalcy: marriage, affairs with sexy Hungarian maids, dance parties replete with hilarious gangsters, cake-loving prostitutes and Japanese-American refugees who’d teach you a thing or two about the preciousness of humanity. But, as these people transition in and out of their lives (some of whom Homer and Langley have become heartbreakingly devoted to), we know they are destined for no one but themselves.
Of course, this is the ultimate tale of co-dependency: the sensitive-though-pragmatic narrator, Homer, (congenitally blind since adolescence), depends wholly on his older brother’s decision making. And while the loyalty of the unhinged Langley (a bitter, wounded vet of the great war) to his impaired younger sibling is profound, it will mean their undoing.
Over time, to compensate for the vastness of their solitary existence, they seek to fill it in with outrageous detritus: numerous pianos, secondhand bikes, hoards of broken toys, cases of World War I gas masks, M1 rifles, and even a Model T Ford in the walnut-paneled dining room. Then there are the leaning mega-towers of worm-riddled newspapers, which is Langley’s daily effort to chronicle and immortalize the most significant events between the decades of Auschwitz and Woodstock. All of it a kind of foreshadowing — growing with the impending and ominous power of a junkyard tsunami.
Reviews of Homer & Langley, E. L. Doctorow’s tenth novel have been furiously mixed, with The New York Times Book Review expressing doubt that readers would be able to make the leap across the chasm of the Collyer brother’s bewildered souls – that is, from packrat mentality to plausible madness.
But consider the insanity of pop culture and the Collyers as foils. In one sparkling moment Langley’s rightful and explosive summation of Americans hooked on TV is enough to drive anyone over the edge: “If I watch anymore I might as well take a boat down the Amazon and have my head shrunken by the Jivaro!”
Homer & Langley is a sly and bittersweet magical mystery tour of our times. Enjoy their excellent adventure!
A 2010 Adult Summer Reading Club recommendation