Homer & Langley - 1st Edition/1st Printing

Doctorow, E. L.

ISBN 10: 1400064945 / ISBN 13: 9781400064946

Published by Random House, New York, 2009

About this Item

An attractive first Trade edition/first printing, preceded only by a private publication by Easton Press in unread Fine condition in alike dust-jacket, SIGNED by author E. L. Doctorow on the title page; The tale of the Collyer brothers and New York hermits Homer and Langley Collyer, Great War veteran who live on Fifth Avenue and scavenge the streets, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley s proposed dateless newspaper in the living museum of artifacts; 8vo; Signed by Author.

Seller Inventory # 18651

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Homer & Langley - 1st Edition/1st Printing
• Publisher: Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1400064945
• ISBN 13: 9781400064946
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Fiction::Novels
  • By Year Of Issue::2000s
  • First Editions
  • A City That Doesn't Sleep
  • Author Collections::Doctorow, E.L.
  • Collection Starter::Hundred Dollars or Less
  • Signed First Editions

About this title

Synopsis

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to The Book of Daniel, World’s Fair, and The March, the novels of E. L. Doctorow comprise one of the most substantive achievements of modern American fiction. Now, with Homer & Langley, this master novelist has once again created an unforgettable work.

Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers–the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers–wars, political movements, technological advances–and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.

Brilliantly conceived, gorgeously written, this mesmerizing narrative, a free imaginative rendering of the lives of New York’s fabled Collyer brothers, is a family story with the resonance of myth, an astonishing masterwork unlike any that have come before from this great writer.

About the Author

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.