Are ALL Americans at risk of hoarding? | Arts & Culture

A while back I read A Perfect Mess, making me feel okay about disarray - it's productive and a sign of a my active, creative mind!  Yeah!
Last week I read E.L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley.  Oh boy, not the same good feeling.

Doctorow's Homer and Langley Collyer live in a brownstone on 5th Avenue.  Homer is blind, and later deaf, and Langley is a World War I veteran, injured by mustard gas.  He is well enough to care for Homer, but becomes a severe hoarder.  Over decades, the large, multistory home becomes a labyrinth of "stuff" with only narrow pathways.  The windows are shuttered, and all but a single door is blocked. They meet with a very sad end. One day in the 1970s the hoard topples on Langley, crushing him to death, and miserably, Homer, now quite old, blind, deaf, and trapped in the house, cries out in vain for Langley....   READ MORE