My Brother's Keeper (Davenport novel)
My Brother's Keeper is a novel by Marcia Davenport based on the true story of the Collyer brothers. Published in 1954 by Charles Scribner, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was later reprinted as a 1956 Cardinal paperback with a cover painting by Tom Dunn. Inspired by the 1947 "New York Times" articles detailing items taken from the Collyer's brownstone after their deaths, Davenport constructed a tale of the Holt brothers, one a failing concert pianist and the other a naval architect, and the events that prompted them  to become recluses in later life. The back cover blurb of the 1956 Cardinal paperback edition described the story with hyperbolic highlights: When the novel was published, it was reviewed in the "Washington Post" and other newspapers of note. An anonymous critic for "Time" (November 8, 1954) made clear the connection with the Collyer brothers: As noted in "Variety", motion picture options on Davenport's novel have spanned decades, yet it has never been filmed. At one point there was some interest in the property by Leonard Mogel, producer of "Heavy Metal", a 1981 movie. H. L. Gold's story  The Old Die Rich ("Galaxy Science Fiction", March 1953), written at the same time as "My Brother's Keeper", may also have been inspired by "The New York Times" articles about the Collyer brothers. (Gold may have identified with the Collyers; for many years, he suffered from agoraphobia and was psychologically unable to leave his apartment. Frederik Pohl's autobiography "The Way the Future Was" describes Gold's long-time agoraphobia in detail.) Unaware of "My Brother's Keeper", the photographer-novelist Jerry Yulsman, during the 1980s, planned a novel based on the Collyer brothers, but he abandoned it when  he was told about Davenport's novel. "Homer & Langley", a 2009 novel by E. L. Doctorow, was inspired by the story of the Collyer brothers, although the author made several changes from historic fact for his narrative.