Doctorow attributes his home's neatness to his wife, Helen, who he said has 'a very strong' sense of order. Langley had died in a junk avalanche, leaving Homer, who was blind and dependent on his brother, to starve. They had amassed 180 tons of it by the time the authorities discovered their bodies in 1947. After their parents died, the brothers gradually retreated from the world and began hoarding junk. Homer and Langley Collyer were the sons of a wealthy doctor, who lived in the early 20th century in a grand mansion in Harlem.

Doctorow, the author of acclaimed novels like “The Book of Daniel” and “Ragtime,” admitted on a hot summer afternoon.Īny clutter is relegated to the pages of the book, a strange tale that will be familiar to New Yorkers of a certain age. “I’ve been living for this many years with a woman who has a very strong, if not obsessive, sense of order,” Mr. The rooms are as serene as the setting the sitting room coffee table holds only a few books stacked just so. Doctorow was drawn to the Collyers’ story in an attempt to exorcise his own clutter?īut a visit to the plain two-story home here that he shares with his wife, Helen, on a quiet street overlooking a cove, dispels that idea. Doctorow’s new novel, “Homer & Langley,” is a fictionalized account of the lives of the Collyer brothers, the legendary New York City hoarders, one wonders if the author is predisposed in that direction.

El doctorow novel