The blind pianist

With their deaths, Homer and Langley Collyer became a legend and part of American folklore at the same time. Since then, everyone has come to mind the obsessed, compulsive passion for collecting about the two brothers. In 1947, after neighbors had not noticed any movement in the Collyer House for weeks and the long-familiar stench had intensified, police were notified. When the authorities finally settled down and broke down the door, they were amazed by the sight, and the newspapers of the time did not succeed in pouring in the accounts of the eyewitnesses. Lots and lots of rooms up to the ceiling were full of old newspapers, books, files, the most assorted shit. Dozens of all kinds of instruments, fourteen pianos, medical instruments, a rudimentary X-ray machine, a plethora of strollers unfolded before their eyes, and a complete Ford T-Model with hundreds of spare parts. Hundreds of tons of waste were removed from the house after weeks of work, according to consistent reports. The corpses of the two brothers lay three meters apart, but Langley was only found sixteen days later. The then teenager Doctorow was stunned by this story, which then occupied him for decades. Based on real events, this is how another authentic historical fantasy of the writer was created. It leads through the spooky labyrinths of the blind pianist’s vast historical museum of crap to the innermost corners of the human psyche. Road novel, a rare genre of travel novel: a dizzying human adventure pushed behind closed doors. One of the greatest figures in American literature in decades, who died in 2015, the author of Ragtime, in his last masterpiece, balances his human-artistic role with unparalleled dignity and elegance.