Otto Bookstore

Hi this is Betsy from Ottos.  E.L. Doctorow has won many awards for his novels.  His newest, Homer and Langley, will probably get him even more.  It’s a work of fiction based a real-life pair of eccentric New York hermits.  Through their eyes (or in Homer’s case, through his other senses—because he is blind) we watch America from the late 1800’s to the age of the Internet.  Homer writes his memoirs on a Braille typewriter as if to a woman he met accidentally in Central Park—a woman who sounded interested in his life.  Langley, his older brother, fought in the 1st World War and returned somewhat deranged from the mustard gas.  He collects…just about everything!—eventually, more than a hundred tons of moldering junk!  His biggest obsession is to buy up all the newspapers daily so that he can compose one edition that will do for all time—a “forevermore edition.”  Their Fifth Avenue mansion becomes a hot spot for an equally bizarre collection of people and, oh yes, cats.  Hauntingly poignant, and pitch perfect New York—Homer and Langley.  You’ll find it at Otto’s, 'a booklover’s paradise, in the heart of downtown Williamsport.'