When Mark mentioned this project to me, the Collyer Brothers were the first people who popped into my mind. We talked at the meeting about hermits who withdraw to better themselves and the world, but Homer and Langley Collyer strike me because they withdrew from the world within the world. They holed up in their brownstone in the middle of Harlem, amassed 130 tons of... stuff, and died protecting it (Langley constructed booby traps to protect the house; one of them blinded his brother Homer, and another killed Langley himself, after which Homer starved). This kind of hermitage is the opposite of the spiritually cleansing that we've been talking about. There doesn't seem to be anything religious and healing about it: it was claustrophobic and compulsive and crushing. The brothers did, however, have a very close relationship (no pun intended). After Homer was blinded, Langley tended to him lovingly. He fed Homer 100 oranges per week to try and restore his sight, and was so confident he would be successful that he saved every newspaper he could get his hands on so Homer could catch up on the news.
A slide-show of the Collyer brownstone excavation:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/collyer-brothers-brownstone-gallery-1.1187698
A tale of their decline:
http://nypress.com/the-collyer-brothers-of-harlem/
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