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A Meaningful Life (1971)

by L.J. Davis(Favorite Author)

3.6 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1590173007 (ISBN13: 9781590173008)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

NYRB Classics

review 1: This book is a pathetic, pointless, racist pile of shit. It's one thing to paint a bleak, coal-black picture of the human condition and another to just rattle off 214pp full of deplorable, sad bigots who hate everyone and everything and know only how to be worthless and abject. What a waste of my time. This book just reinforces my belief that, for all its lofty ambitions and charming cover designs, the New York Review of Books is a misguided enterprise. I know I must be forced now to give up my bookish and hipster bona fides, but I can't help it. They purport to bring back into print books that deserve a second chance, but the fact is (aside from the lovely "The Dud Avocado"), nothing I've ever read from NYRB has ever actually been any good. Maybe these books really should... more have gone out of print in the first place. Oh my fucking GOD this book was so awful and sinister it's turning me into Ayn Rand! See what I mean? Aaaaaaah!!!
review 2: This is exactly what I look to NYRB Classics for: a minor gem from a writer who failed to establish himself in spite of a varied and not undistinguished output. I found myself rooting for this guy stuck in a boring job who decides to reclaim his life by renovating a mansion in a dodgy Brooklyn neighborhood (we are in the late 1960s) while sharing his wife's aggravation with him. His futile battle is heart-rending and the book has just the right amount of high comedy. less

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