Since 1999, New York Review of Books Classics, an imprint of the publishing arm of the legendary journal of ideas, has made a name for itself as a savior of long-forgotten works and a champion of the obscure and out-of-print. The company continues to build its reputation with the recent rerelease of L.J. Davis’ A Meaningful Life, a novel that has been mostly ignored since it first appeared thirty-eight years ago. The book revolves around the futile struggles of Lowell Lake, a man with no notable qualities of any sort, to find redemption in real estate by renovating a crumbling brownstone on a crime-ridden block in Brooklyn. Lowell, a man whose life can best be described by its failures and lacunae, embarks on a quixotic campaign to find a higher purpose by restoring the faded mansion to its former glory, having fallen in love with it in a lurid set piece detailing the festering, noxious townhouse and its current inhabitants who are all too easily evicted. Davis’s prose is sharp, bleak, and engagingly mordant, all characteristics that drew native Brooklynite Jonathan Lethem (who was childhood friends with one of Davis’s sons) to the novel. He contributes an introduction to the new edition and can be thanked for the rediscovery of this caustic work about the existential angst of plodding through a life of mediocrity and banality.

KEYWORDS: books, LJ Davis

* Required Field

Your Name: *

Your E-Mail: *

Your Remark:

Friend's Name: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Friend's E-Mail: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Image Verification: *

 Loading ...