![]() ![]() Further, the Collyer house as presented by Doctorow assumes qualities akin to Gaston Bachelard’s concept of the oneiric house, a space that becomes the “center of condensation of intimacy, in which daydream accumulates” (29). In Doctorow’s words, the notorious recluses of Fifth Avenue “opted out of civilization and pulled the world in after them,” choosing this paradoxical way of dwelling to counter an encroaching modernity (Ciabattari). ![]() iii According to the German philosopher, this comportment toward material objects reveals itself as “releasement toward things,” as “letting beings be,” that is, opening up the possibility of relying on things while not becoming enslaved to them. On the contrary, they become paradigms of dwelling with alertness in the Heideggerian sense, resisting the instrumentalist modes of thought and responding non-masteringly to hoarded things that is, letting themselves and the world be rather than seeking to dominate the world to their own ends. iii I am referring to Heidegger’s concept of Gelassenheit, as presented in the two essays contained in (.)Ĥ Most importantly, in Doctorow’s novel, the Collyer brothers are not the obsessed hoarders or the models of American consumerism par excellence, as the urban legend describes them.Doctorow deftly manipulates Poe’s favorite gothic connection between architectural construction and the psychological experience of characters to reimagine the lives of the Collyers, whose self-imposed incarceration is experienced as an act of autonomy and self-determination, and contrasts sharply with the mundane prosperity and social conformity championed by modern American consumer culture. In this way, the novel traces the disturbing relationships between urban space and subjectivity, as well as individual freedom and consumer capitalism across an entire era. In expanding their story to cover the twentieth century in its entirety-from the early 1910s to the late 1990s-Doctorow is able to explore the elements of home and domesticity and their shaping of psychic life and belonging in relation to a shifting cultural landscape. ii Scott Herring’s 2011 essay, “Collyer Curiosa: A Brief History of Hoarding,” and more recently his b (.)ģ However, Doctorow’s narrative departs from the historical reality of the Collyer brothers’ lives in its chronology.I will compare Roderick Usher’s “mansion of gloom,” among the most memorable of Poe’s dark, many-chambered mansions, with Doctorow’s depiction of the “dark and decaying” (Doctorow, Homer & Langley 205) New York brownstone of the infamous Collyer brothers. In what follows, I will explore the resemblances between the novel and the tale, focusing specifically on their shared interest in notions of home and domesticity that transcend the social norms and values of an increasingly urban America. This article is a first attempt to redress that gap in Doctorow scholarship. The echoes of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) in Doctorow’s penultimate novel, Homer & Langley (2009), have been all but ignored, with the exception of Christopher Benfey’s review of the work, in which he identified the Collyer mansion’s “family resemblance to Usher’s doomed abode” (Benfey). This discussion, however, tends to focus on Doctorow’s early writing, while Doctorow’s appropriation of Poe in his late work remains largely underdiscussed. Doctorow’s work-an indebtedness that Doctorow himself readily acknowledged. Top of pageīring the outside of the world into the house, andįrank Lloyd Wright, “Building the New House” (1943)ġ Scholars have long noted the influence of Edgar Allan Poe on E. On the contrary, they become paradigms of dwelling with alertness in the Heideggerian sense, the embodiment of an escapist mentality in a culture driven by mundane prosperity and social compliance. In Doctorow’s novel, the Collyer brothers are not the obsessed hoarders or the models of American consumerism par excellence, as the urban myth describes them. Doctorow deftly manipulates Poe’s favorite gothic connection between architectural construction and the psychological experience of characters to explore notions of home and domesticity in an increasingly urban America through a reconfiguration of the legendary Homer and Langley Collyer. Doctorow’s 2009 novel, Homer & Langley, through the lens of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” While there has been a recurring claim about the significant similarities of Doctorow’s work to some of the tales by Edgar Allan Poe, there has been no critical reading that draws the connection between this novel and Poe’s famous tale. ![]()
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