Homer & Langley in Crazy Challenge Connection

Mar 21, 2014 Susan rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction

Doctorow has taken a kernel of fact and built it into an engaging piece of fiction. The Collyer brothers Homer and Langley continued to live in a New York brownstone after their parents died. Homer was blind, and Langley had been affected by mustard gas during the war. Homer, the younger, narrates the story, which chronicles the rest of their lives as they become gradually more reclusive. What Doctorow has imagined and given us in the book is not the bare facts of their lives, but the forces tha ...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Linda C rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, favorites

Homer and Langley are brothers living across from Central Park in NYC. When Homer is 17 he is told he will lose his sight and he treats the advance as an experiment, standing in the same place in Central Park each day and seeing less of it each time. He learns the neighborhood for several blocks and prepares by learning Braille and every nook and cranny of the house. By the time he is blind his brother, 2 years older is going off to WWI.

Langley is a philosopher and individualist, traveling at a Homer and Langley are brothers living across from Central Park in NYC. When Homer is 17 he is told he will lose his sight and he treats the advance as an experiment, standing in the same place in Central Park each day and seeing less of it each time. He learns the neighborhood for several blocks and prepares by learning Braille and every nook and cranny of the house. By the time he is blind his brother, 2 years older is going off to WWI.

Langley is a philosopher and individualist, traveling at a different beat. When he returns after being gassed with mustard gas, it is to find that his parents died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. The 2 brothers continue residence in the family mansion. Homer is a pianist and spends a great deal of time practicing. Langley begins to collect potentially useful items as well as buy, read and store all the city newspapers. Langley catalogs all the news article and is preparing to publish a universal newspaper that will never need to be written again because it will tell everything anyone needs to know. Of course, he keeps finding things that don't fit his categories and then has to wait till something similar happens, so it will be universal.

Over the years we see them interact and react to events in history. Langley opposes anyone telling him what to do, so there are clashes with government and authorities. He continues to hoard and his categories of usefulness broaden. At times this seemed an insular version of Forrest Gump as history moves within their scope.

The story is told from Homer's perspective as he is writing their story near the end of their lives. The brothers are protective of one another. They never disagree, both feeling that an argument is not worthy of the disruption and they just avoid the controversial topic. I enjoyed Homer's view of the world and his total understanding of his brother, as he gets more and more eccentric. His descriptions of his world are beautiful and perceptive. Some of the action is hilarious and some sad. Wonderful! ...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Lori rated it it was ok

I read this book because it was a book club selection. It wasn't a book I would have read otherwise. I didn't dislike this book, but I also did not find it interesting. A magazine or newspaper article would have been plenty. ...more

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