I can't say I liked this book much. While I started off liking it, it got rather tiresome by the middle. It depicts the sad life of Homer and Langley, two brothers who live in a Fifth Avenue brownstone, originally owned by their parents. While Langley is off in World War I, their parents die. Homer stays in the house. When Langley returns, he isn't quite right. Meanwhile, Homer has lost his eyesight.

Homer & Langley take us from World War I through to 70s or 80s. While Homer alternately plays his piano and feels deficient because of his lost eyesight, Langley buys every newspaper in the city and categories his article in order to one day prepare an issue of a newspaper that will be accurate every single day. Langley also collects everything he can think of, putting all the debris in the brownstone, including a Model T Ford.

The brothers come in contact with figures as divergent as Mafiosi and flower children. They battle health inspectors and fire marshalls as their apartment becomes a fire and health hazard.

I found Homer & Langley very plodding and I began skimming somewhere about page 150 (out of 200). While the subjects of the book are interesting and apparently became newsworthy at the time, the book just doesn't hold up for me. ( )

Interesting and tragic story. At times I thought this had brilliant insights into Homer's feelings. At other times it seemed that Doctorow trivialized the story by adding mobsters and hippies. This didn't add to the story or an understanding of the brothers and their motivations. ( )

Sometime just before the turn of the century, Homer, a young teenager, loses his sight. His visual perception of the world ends with this event. Now, he LISTENS to New York change from the 5th Avenue Victorian mansion left to him and his brother by his parents. His brother collects cast off and broken bits and pieces, filling the mansion with the cast-off's of each year that passes. Homer listens, touches, perceives the passage of time and the bits of history he hears on the radio or learns from his brother's obsessive newspaper reading.

The brothers live together, slowly isolating themselves more and more while New York rushes around them. The mansion's room fill to near bursting with detritus of the city that Langley sees as valuable. Langley, obsessed with the news, is convinced that he can write a single newspaper that will cover the concepts of all news that ever happens; he works on this for most of his life. Homer, dependent on his brother, has no choice but to follow Langley into his obsessions.

I was reading Homer & Langley, thinking that it was interesting chronicle of the 1890's through 1970's New York City when it struck me. It was more than that. Doctorow was telling me of the rapid changes that have happened in the last 120 years, how quickly society has cast off one latest craze to adopt another. How each new creation had value, but was pushed aside as trash as the next latest thing was introduced. He's also telling me that, in the middle of the swirl of a populated city, the elderly can be isolated and neglected, left to a terrible end simply because they don't fit into that rapidly-moving and changing world they find themselves in.

Truly enjoyable read. Highly recommended. ( )

I've tried. Many times over the past six months. I'd never read Doctorow before and this was apparently the wrong one to start with. It's a nice story but that's it. No more. I'd just as soon have read a nonfiction story about the facts that this novel was based on. The novelization added nothing for me. The writing wasn't particularly enjoyable, although it flowed easily enough. The story, insofar as I can tell now, sticks largely to the facts and where it diverges, I see no reason for it to do so. The tangents add little. More disappointing still, the writing is pedestrian: no grace, no flair. An interesting story--but that's why Doctorow himself chose this set of facts (and updated it). He may be a highly talented writer with a lot to offer, but not in this book. A great disappointment. ( )

I had high hopes for Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow. I've read The Waterworks and the march and felt that he presented a good sense of time and place with these two books. H & L however felt like a contemporary look at historical events. The book was written present (seeming) tense but felt like a flashback. If you are new to Doctorow, read his earlier works and save this for later.