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Tuesday, September 29th

Random House Inc

Price: $26.00

E. L. DOCTOROW

discusses

Homer & Langley:

A Novel

 

with noted editor and publisher

JASON EPSTEIN

 

$28 tickets are on sale now

(Tickets are redeemable for a copy of

Mr. Doctorow's new novel before or at the event.)

Harvard Book Store is thrilled to welcome legendary, award-winning American novelist E. L. DOCTOROW to talk about his new book, Homer and Langley, with noted publisher and editor JASON EPSTEIN.

Doctorow once again delves into a true story of Americana to find inspiration for his most recent novel, Homer & Langley. The title characters are the infamous Collyer brothers, whose eccentricities included a shared snobbish nature and an obsession with hoarding and protecting their rapidly deteriorating property. Narrated by Homer, the novel examines the tumultuous history of twentieth-century America from the perspective of a pair of brothers who, while claustrophobically entangled in their surroundings, were also irredeemably alienated from them.

"Following the panoramic scope of The March, Doctorow creates a microcosmic and mythic tale of compulsion, alienation, and dark metamorphosis inspired by the famously eccentric Collyer brothers of New York City. Born to wealth in the 1880s, Homer and Langley became recluses and hoarders barricaded inside their Fifth Avenue brownstone, which was crammed with more than 100 tons of moldering junk. Altering facts and tinkering with time, Doctorow has Homer, who is blind, narrate with deadpan humor and spellbinding precision. Homer is devoted to music, and his brother is devoted to him, but Langley, offkilter after a gas attack in the Great War, is beyond strange.... Over the decades, people come and go...but finally Homer and Langley are irrevocably alone, prisoners in their fortress of rubbish, trapped in their warped form of brotherly love. Wizardly Doctorow presents an ingenious, haunting odyssey that unfolds within a labyrinth built out of the detritus of war and excess." —Booklist (starred) 

"Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that capture the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness." —Elle magazine

"Doctorow, whose literary trophy shelf has got to be overflowing by now, delivers a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers.... Doctorow's achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It's a feat of distillation, vision, and sympathy." —Publishers Weekly (starred)

CONTACT:

General Info:
617.661.1515

Media:
617.661.1424 ex.1

Email:

E. L. Doctorow’s novels include The March, City of God, The Waterworks, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, and Billy Bathgate. His work has been published in thirty-two languages. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. E. L. Doctorow lives in New York.

Photo by Marion Ettlinger.

Jason Epstein is an American publisher and editor whose work has transformed the publishing industry. He worked as an editorial director at Random House for forty years. During that time he has edited may well-known novelists, including Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E.L. Doctorow, Philip Roth and Gore Vidal. In 1952, while an editor for Doubleday, he created Anchor Books, the first publisher of the now ubiquitous trade paperback format. He is also a co-founder of both The New York Review of Books and Library of America.

Photo Credit: Peter Peter