Brothers Keepers
July 24, 2017 4:51 PM   Subscribe

The cautionary tale of the Harlem hoarders, the Collyer brothers. I've known about this story since 1954, when Marcia Davenport wrote the novel My Brother's Keeper, a romanticized portrait of this sad story. I'd never seen these pictures.
posted by MovableBookLady (16 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Since the 1960s, the site of the former Collyer house has been a pocket park, named for the brothers.

So the physical space that was once so crammed with stuff is now a dedicated empty space. Quite poetic, that.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:07 PM on July 24, 2017 [15 favorites]


The little vest-pocket park is so clean, so spare, with slender birches.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:08 PM on July 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


Also the subject of E. L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:34 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I believe these are the brothers on whom Kangaroo and Kangaroo was based?

Kangaroo and Kangaroo
Just like me and just like you
Except that they were kangaroo
And hadn't very much to do
But spend their lives collecting stuff
Afraid they would not have enough.
For everything they found a space
Because they figured --"just in case...".

"Just in case we need a bit, we'd better save a lot of it.
Just in case the martians come
We'll have the stuff and give them some.
Just in case, well just in case..."
And so they filled up every space.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:38 PM on July 24, 2017 [7 favorites]


I came across that Marcia Davenport book a few years ago, she was a good writer. It was fascinating.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:57 PM on July 24, 2017


Langley began keeping years’ worth of newspapers so his brother could read them once his sight had been restored. “I am saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news,” he once told reporters.

I can so understand this. Fifty years later, it wouldn't have been necessary.
posted by tully_monster at 9:37 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's just so much to unpack here; I don't even know where to begin.
posted by Carouselle at 9:40 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


The descriptions are absolutely horrifying.
posted by etaoin at 10:29 PM on July 24, 2017


I read about them in a 1953 book I found in the library, Out Of This World by Helen Worden Erskine.
posted by Rash at 10:30 PM on July 24, 2017


Langley began keeping years’ worth of newspapers so his brother could read them once his sight had been restored. “I am saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news,” he once told reporters.

I can so understand this. Fifty years later, it wouldn't have been necessary.


It wasn't necessary then either.
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:06 AM on July 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


Too much this resembles the Riverside Drive apartment of my gay foster dad. He was saved by moving, eventually. Part of the problem is simply that throwing something away requires a decision. Once you have set too much aside to "consider later", it is that much harder for "later" to arrive.

How do I know? Of course I tend to do some of these things.
posted by Goofyy at 6:09 AM on July 25, 2017


my estranged father is a hoarder. I am convinced that if my mother predeceased him, the entire house would be full within the span of 3 months and we would find him similarly trapped and decaying within a year.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:16 AM on July 25, 2017


Davenport was a pretty good writer, TWinbrook8, but her personal history is even better. Her parents were Bernard Glick and Alma Gluck. Gluck was an acclaimed opera singer in the early 1900s with a truly dramatic life which Davenport fictionalized in "Of Lena Geyer." After Glick died, Gluck married Efrem Zimbalist sr and so Davenport and Efrem Zimbalist jr became step-siblings. Just saying Glick and Gluck makes me giggle.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:14 AM on July 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


Part of the problem is simply that throwing something away requires a decision. Once you have set too much aside to "consider later", it is that much harder for "later" to arrive.

This tends to be my issue. I've learned that I need to force choices and then immediately take a box out to the curb. And I still have far too much clutter.

Also, there's just physical exhaustion as you get older. I purged my book collection by about a third when I first moved in here, and nearly 20 years later, the idea of repeating all that moving and stacking and hauling of scores of heavy boxes to the used book store and library donations daunts my much older self.
posted by tavella at 8:49 AM on July 25, 2017


Excellent biography by Franz Lidz, Ghosty Men, a very thorough account. Connects with his earlier book Unstrung Heroes, which talks about his uncle who was a hoarder.
posted by Melismata at 7:35 PM on July 25, 2017


Dang, I had no idea there was a Doctorow novel about this -- that's going on my summer reading list. Hoarder lit! Beach read!
posted by Miss T.Horn at 1:39 AM on July 27, 2017


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