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...

You Blew It Up! You Damn, Dirty Hippies!

Directive 51 
A Novel of Daybreak
by John Barnes

p. 2010

John Barnes’ Directive 51 is the latest in the slew of post-apocalyptic fiction novels in my repertoire, but unlike most of the others I’ve read, it is not a product of Cold War propaganda, but rather a modern day take on the apocalypse, in that it hits us where it counts—technology. Directive 51 is the first in a trilogy of novels (titled the Daybreak trilogy) detailing an attack on the world using bio-terrorism that targets all mechanical and plastic materials, effectively reducing us to pre-industrial-revolution times.

Let’s start with what exactly Directive 51 is. It’s real, for starters, a term coined under the Bush administration, but existing, in some form, under some other title, for a couple decades, according to the afterword by Barnes. It’s the rule that states what happens when the president is found unfit to lead the country, and that is precisely what happens when Daybreak—the name for the underground eco-terrorist movement—is unleashed on the planet. The search for a fitting president in the crisis loosely provides the basis for the first installment in this trilogy... and it’s exactly as boring as it sounds.

Directive 51 is fundamentally an ensemble story, but indispensable government agent, Heather O’Grainne, often takes center stage. Heather works for the department of 'Future Threat Assessment’, a group meant to anticipate crimes and prevent them, and since the story picks up on the very morning that Daybreak (a worldwide coordinated event amongst thousands of different groups and millions of participants) is unleashed, I think it’s safe to say that Heather is probably terrible at her job. But we’re supposed to see her as the smartest person in the room, so it’s probably a good idea to adopt a ‘Just shut up and go with it’ attitude from the start.

A lot of the characters in this story have the potential to be interesting. A lot of the first part follows various ‘Daybreakers’ as they deposit their instruments of destruction around the U.S. and a couple of them are mentioned later, but for the most part, they are dropped without ceremony or just plain presented as brainless, selfish hippies. If Barnes was intending for their cause to be sympathetic, he failed miserably, but I don’t think he was; I think he had every intention of bashing young eco-crusaders for the dirty hippies he thinks they are.

Barnes isn’t very transparent in general. Despite the fact that two party politics really have nothing to do with the conflict, it is repeatedly stressed that the acting president when Daybreak occurs is Democratic, and when he suffers an untimely mental breakdown, his replacement—another Democrat—quickly turns tyrant and stages a coup, actually succeeding in murdering the first president so he can’t reclaim power. The new president is a Republican who had been planning to run in the upcoming election anyway. It is mentioned that he leans towards religious fundamentalism, leading me to suspect that this president will also be problematic when he tries to sneakily impose his beliefs on the American people, vulnerable in this time of crisis... but that entire thread is dropped and it turns out this president is, like, the best prez evah and exactly what America NEEDS... until he gets martyred in a nuclear attack. His replacement? Another Democrat who lets power go to his head... of course. Very subtle, Barnes.

Dropping story threads is something else I have issues with. I understand that this is a trilogy and this is only book one, but nothing really happens. There are a small handful of actions scenes interspersed in a 500 page book, and the rest is all talking, and not even fun or interesting talk at that. Lots of talk is forgivable if the reader is enjoying themselves, but Barnes’ dialogue is forced and his characters are too bland. All of them are either no-nonsense government officials who were too stupid to do anything right or dirty hippies who only thought of themselves. I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them and any of those I thought could be interesting were dropped halfway through. So much for that.

But Directive 51’s biggest problem is in the subversion of its genre. The reason I love reading post-apocalypse stories is to see how ordinary people adapt and survive, but none of Directive 51’s characters are regular people; they are the most important people in the country, literally, and as such they don’t really get to experience the full realm of Daybreak firsthand. They get showers and electricity and access to the last working forms of transportation where others do not, because they are that important. The full depth of human struggle of Daybreak—the starvation, the riots, the ravages of disease—are not felt and these characters are not relatable.

I will give Barnes one thing though—his ratio of female to male characters is impressive and his women are strong and smart and not totally lacking in a couple spare dimensions... The only time I raised an eyebrow was when Heather—our lead hero and at one point, somehow the only voice of reason and stability in the entire government—decided that the best idea, in the wake of a worldwide attack kickstarting the end of the world as we know it, was to get pregnant immediately with her sure-to-not-survive-the-apocalypse handicapped boyfriend.

Because, sure.

This foolhardy logic aside, Heather did a great job as lead and I’m sure she and all the other characters introduced in Directive 51 continue to grow and have adventures in the next two novels in Barnes’ trilogy... but I’m clearly not the target audience for them.

Genocide by Dolphin

The Dolphins of Altair

By Margaret St. Clair
p. 1967

I will admit that St. Clair’s The Dolphins of Altair is a fantasy novel I picked up mostly out of novelty—the idea that super intelligent dolphins would join up with some hippies and free themselves from the tyranny of humanity was just too good to pass up. Just under 200 pages, the book was a quick read and, just like other fantasy novels of the 1960s that I’ve encountered, far more of an interesting case study than it was a layered, poignant, or well-written story. I am not going to spoiler-tag this one, because honestly no person in their right mind would seek out this book after reading this review.

Altair jumps right into the action, joining together in the very first chapter the legendary intelligent dolphins, or sea people as they call themselves, with a trio of humans who happen upon their psychic call. It is narrated by Amtor, a dolphin who considers himself a historian of his people. The humans are Madelaine, a young woman who loses her memory when the dolphins call out to her and acts as their primary vehicle for translation, Sven, a young man who hears the call accidentally, and Dr. Lawrence, Madelaine’s psychologist, who follows the girl out of curiosity when she goes to answer the call of the sea. He has the hardest time fitting in to this covenant he wasn’t necessarily invited to join, but he sticks around anyway to help the dolphins with their ultimate plan.

And what is that plan, you might ask? Well, it’s simple, really. Phase One: the sea people must free all the dolphins from human-run research labs; Phase Two: make sure humans never bother them again. No problem, right? Should be a cinch.

For whatever reason, the dolphins decide this must be done immediately, and in lieu of peaceful protests or sending in the animal rights activists or something else sane, if a bit mundane, our righteous heroes decide to steal a device that causes an earthquake—yes, an earthquake—to free all the sea people at once.

And they do just that.

But wait (!) there’s more! Despite numerous setbacks, including being hunted by the irate government for their pretty severe crimes against humanity (the details of which are glossed over) and betrayed by an ally, the dolphins and their loyal humans go ahead with Phase Two, which involves making another device called the ahln, to plant in the sea that melts the polar fucking ice caps. But only a little! At least, that’s the plan. The brilliant logical reasoning behind this idea is that by melting the polar ice caps gradually (just a smidge!), humanity will be too busy dealing with the repercussions (a nice gloss-over of worldwide devastation and death by drowning) to worry about the dolphins anymore.

And they do that, too. Actually, they fuck it up like the indecisive morons they are and melt the ice caps all at once, thus kickstarting an apocalypse, and they barely even feel bad about it.

Here is my problem with this story: the trio’s plan isn’t just extreme, it’s fucking overkill. Literally. I was ready to chalk all this up to the inclinations of the author, Margaret St. Clair, who I assumed to be a ‘Save the whales!/Damn the man!’-style hippie of the highest order (I was close; she is, however, an established Wiccan). I figure, all right, this woman clearly loves dolphins, so she wrote a love letter to them in the form of an anarchist what-if novel. This would have been acceptable if her main character (and the one the dolphins trusted and revered the most), Madelaine, had any sort of conviction whatsoever, any sort of drive to make things happen.

But she doesn’t. She just fucking sits there feeling bad for everyone and hemming and hawing over making the tough decisions. After being passively injured, she actually becomes less active, instead laying about like the damsel in distress she clearly is, until she’s needed to help the dolphins contact their spiritual leader or whatever, using Udra, a process of meditation which involves—you guessed it—more lying around.

For a lead heroine being written by a proud female author, there is no excuse for the vacuous hole where Madelaine’s personality should be. Though she is a 20-something woman, the book only refers to her as a girl, subtly stripping her of maturity and responsibility. Worse than that, she is actually stripped of every vestige of her personality when she loses her memory and wanders off, and when she recalls a bit of her former life, she doesn’t care. She is an instrument of the sea people now, here to do their bidding because that’s the only important thing in life. St. Clair makes it clear that “Madelaine” does not matter, insofar as calling her by various other names interchangably—Sosa, Moonlight, Madelaine—what does it matter?

And the dolphins are on the same field as the girl. They call the humans and implore them to help initiate change, then decline taking violent action, pretending like they love the humans they feel wiser and better than. Their personalities are equally interchangeable and not one of them stands out from the next. We are supposed to root for Madelaine and the sea people, I guess, because the writing straight up tells us we’re supposed to root for them, but when it comes to making the hard decisions—killing millions of one race to save another—Madelaine and the dolphins alike seem awfully comfortable from up on their high horses.

Sven is a bit more active but disappears for a majority of the novel when he is abducted by the ‘government’ only to reappear in a weird subplot that bears no relevance to the rest of the story so I won’t mention it here. It’s Dr. Lawrence who really makes all the tough decisions. He argues that humans are brutal beings who kill each other so wantonly that they deserve punishment, formulates the earthquake plan, then reneges and tattles to the government, leading to Sven’s capture, Madelaine’s injury and the slaughter of many dolphins. Inexplicably he comes back, begs for forgiveness, and helps Madelaine build the ahln, which would kill even more people than the earthquake. Despite being directly contrary to the prior fears that led to his betrayal, Dr. Lawrence again argues that humans deserve to die and goes against Madelaine/Dolphin wishes by stealing the ahln and setting it on full power, thus being the direct cause of the apocalypse. Distraught, he throws himself off a bridge before he can see the repercussions of his actions.

Conveniently, the sea people and the main couple take no part in this action, so we aren’t burdened with having to wonder whether the heroes did the right thing. The third man played the part of scapegoat and he paid for it with his life. If he was wrong or right, it doesn’t matter. Somehow, Madelaine still gets credit for saving the dolphins, which is total bullshit. Dr. Lawrence was the one with the conviction needed to make shit happen and he was vilified for it. I’d care about him more if he weren’t such a woefully inconsistent character... but even that is something the author couldn’t commit to.

I don’t want to drag Margaret St. Clair through the mud here. I’m sure she was a nice person and this book is hypothetical at best, but I can’t help but feel cheated. This was a story with true moral dilemmas... which the author made damn sure we wouldn’t have to feel too bad about. This mystical ocean tale just lacked serious depth.