Previously on Extreme Hoarders:

Homer & Langley
by E.L. Doctorow
p. 2009

E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley is a historical fiction novel based on the lives of real-life brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, Manhattan eccentrics who gained unwanted publicity during the Depression era. Taking considerable liberties with history, Doctorow has created a rich collage of 20^th century Americana, presenting the brothers as ambassadors of culture in a way, rich treasures tucked away in obscurity, observers of history but not necessarily non-participants.

Homer—the younger brother and narrator of the story—and Langley are the only sons of a wealthy couple who pass away in the young mens’ adolescence, leaving them a spacious Fifth Avenue home. Due to a genetic affliction, Homer has lost his eyesight in his teens. Langley, meanwhile, comes home from the first World War in the wake of his parents’ deaths, greatly changed from the boy that left. Homer—blind and deeply self-conscious—and Langley—stricken with insanity from being gassed in the war—begin to slowly but surely shut themselves off from the outside world.

This doesn’t happen all at once. The hermit lifestyle evolves over time as Homer sinks deeper into loneliness and resignation and Langley literally constructs the walls to his own prison as he amasses a veritable junkyard of knick knacks and possessions that he can never seem to get rid of. Over the years they invite dozens of unique personalities into their home; gangsters, prostitutes, flappers, jazz musicians, and—for a brief period in the sixties—a bevy of hippies that float in and out of the brothers’ lives. They experience a wide range of American life—the evolution of pop music, unrequited love, techonological advance, the pain of losing a loved one in the war, organized crime risen from the Great Depression, McCarthyism and fear-mongering, antiwar protest, a battle with the taxman—before they eventually shutter their windows from the world.

Doctorow has done a wonderful job creating vibrant personalities for two notorious hermits that make them seem endearing and genuine; their motivations for retreating from society are well-defined and relatable. I felt moved by their plights at times and frustrated by their inability to connect at others. Their journey which spans many decades yet never moves beyond the confines of their home is very moving and the way Homer narrates his life tale, addressing a mystery woman named Jacqueline, gives the reader hope that—before the end of his life—Homer finally finds the type of love and companionship he has been seeking his whole life.

... Except that’s not what happens at all!

In a cruel twist, it turns out the oft-mentioned but yet unseen Jacqueline is simply a writer that Homer met once and had a nice afternoon with then never saw again. He constructed an imaginary life with her as he did several other women before her, and deluded himself into believing she would come back for him. Instead, Homer and Langley die, separate and alone, entombed and literally suffocated by their amassed possessions.

I waited patiently for things to turn around for the Collyer brothers but it wasn’t until I read the final few pages and put the book down that I realized I wasn’t going to be getting any sort of uplifting ending. I felt cheated; surely their symbolic suffering would come to an end, surely it meant something, but instead I just felt like chucking the book at the wall.

I didn’t think about the book again for some days but then I sat down to write this review and finally looked up the real-life Collyer brothers, of whom I knew nothing... and it turns out Doctorow’s invented history is actually the optimistic version of the story. Go figure.

Doctorow’s story can pass for truth because not too much is actually known about the reclusive brothers. In the fictionalized story, Homer’s blindness and Langley’s insanity become metaphorical walls between them and the world, a complement their literal walls. In reality, Homer (actually the older of the two in real life) became blind in his forties, and Langley moved in to care for him. Their parents didn’t die young, they didn’t host tea dances and jazz music sessions or put up their house like a hostel to young hippies. They didn’t even live to see the sixties and they never let anyone in anyway. Homer and Langley—the real Homer and Langley—died in 1947, the former of starvation and heart disease, the latter of asphyxiation, smothered by his own hoarded objects. Their deaths were probably painful and terrifying and they were alone, but together in the same house.

So at least Doctorow got that part right.

I don’t blame him for trying to make things seem sunnier. In the author’s version of things, Homer and Langley lived exuberant lives that intertwined with many unforgettable characters. It’s nice to think they experienced life from behind those walls. The more likely reality—that the Collyer brothers were hermits of their own design, afraid and resentful of the outside world all the way to their tragic ends—is a much less interesting story. If I had known the details of their true demise, I probably wouldn’t have resented Doctorow’s ending so much, as it mirrored the truth.

Still, when you take as many liberties as Doctorow has, you might as well fabricate a happy ending as well. Maybe Jacqueline did come back for Homer after all... Just maybe...

Hipsters in Training

Pirates of the Retail Wasteland

by Adam Selzer 
p. 2008

I picked up Pirates of the Retail Wasteland from a discount bin in front of a soon-to-be-shut-down Borders, which seems ironic given the novel’s themes about corporations shutting down the ‘little guys’ and the transience of the retail industry. The cover description was vague, and I hoped it might run parallel to my own ideas for a customer-service-themed story, to see what other people had to say about topic and how mine would differentiate. Evidently I misinterpreted the plot slightly, and I really miscalculated the target audience, which I have a good ten years on. But I’ll try to be fair in my review and keep in mind that this book was written for 11-15-year-olds.

Pirates is the story of a group of middle-schoolers in the so-called ‘gifted pool’, who write poetry ragging on their gym teachers in their exclusive advanced English class, who have a hippie teacher that lets them sit on couches instead of desks, who go to the school’s basketball games with the express purpose of blowing them off because they’re cooler than that, who hang out at the local coffee house and drink mind-blowing amounts of coffee, though most middle-schoolers are more likely to be slamming Mountain Dews and Red Bulls, and who really really hate the corporate makeover their town is receiving. In short, our narrator, Leon, and his ragtag group of ‘wacky’ friends are basically insufferable, young hipsters in training... which means that I probably would have loved this book had I read it in my early teens.

Selzer’s novel, which is very much aimed at the age group it portrays, is everything a rebellious, too-cool young preteen who knows everything could ever want in a book, but innocent enough to still be acceptable to parents of said preteens. I think the fact that I was so annoyed by the pretentiousness and bratty qualities of Leon and his friends is a sign that I am getting old, because all I could think throughout the book was how much I wanted to slap every one of these children upside the head.

The plot is about the most illogical thing you could conceive of. Through a hyperbolic misunderstanding, Leon and pals come to believe their privately-owned coffee joint of choice, Sip, is in danger of going under thanks to their corporate competitor, Wackford’s (Selzer’s approximation of Starbucks, I suppose). For a school assignment directing them to create a ‘monument’ to something, the kids decide to “take over” Wackford’s, and create a short film as a monument to the old downtown area, in hopes of saving Sip from being shut down. Posing as pirates (and with copious amounts of help from two apathetic employees and a good old mid-western snowstorm), the well-intentioned preteens convert Wackfords into an “accounting office” for the day, with the belief that no one will be able to tell the difference. What exactly these ‘pirates’ are getting at with this comparison is beyond me, and even their teacher claims to not understand the point, but for all parties involved, it’s probably best to just go along with it. The kids’ understanding of what an office looks like is very much in keeping not only with someone who has never worked in one, but with someone who is too young to even have a job to begin with.

I thought about this book after I finished it, trying to decide if there really was a deeper meaning to be found or if I’d just wasted an a few hours on trite, indulgent preteen bullshit and settled somewhere in between. The book does a good job at targeting its audience but it does little to address problems that same audience will be facing just a few more years down the road. Leon and his friends can pretend all they want like they’re never going to sell out and they’re going to be hip forever, but they are so close to realizing that they will change, that the ‘old downtown’ they’re striving to protect is really just their childhood naivete quickly slipping away. If this theme were drawn out more, I would commend Selzer for composing a novel celebrating that last bastion of childhood before growing up but unfortunately, nothing Leon and his friends do is painted in a bad light. There are no negative consequences for their behavior and nothing really seems to have been learned. The kids act like holy terrors to unassuming adults and no one calls them out on their shit, especially not the adult employees at Wackfords who enable them.

One character in Pirates is a self-described McHobo, an average guy with a personal philosophy about service industry jobs. He whores himself out at every corporation, never working at any one place for more than six months, and never moving up in his career. Supposedly, McHobos shun things like benefits and raises and just live the life of the nomadically-employed. This is probably the most interesting concept in the book, and one Selzer can relate to being a McHobo himself, but it’s largely avoided, and I still don’t buy that any person in real life wants this life. People working these jobs just want to get by and pay their bills until they move on to something better. I have never met someone who would allow a bunch of preteens to annoy the living hell out of their loyal customers just for kicks, and anyone who would do this shouldn’t be hired anywhere.

But I digress; maybe all this is just a sign that I am getting old and have forgotten what it’s like to have that innocence of youth, that belief that nothing is ever going to change and that adults can never be cool and I have such a vast understanding of the world that it is incredible that I’m the only one who sees things... Yes, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland is a great book for a specific age. I anticipate many a reader going back to relive this book in their later years and revising their opinions about many of these characters, perhaps even switching sides on the kids vs. adults issue. In that case, I suppose, it is a story that is quite true to life.