L. J. Davis's A Meaningful Life is a blistering black comedy about gentrification and its discontents, a gritty picture of the collapsing New York of the 1970s, a prophetic send-up of middle-class anxieties and ambitions. Just out of college, Lowell Lake heads to New York, where he plans to make it big as a writer. Instead he finds a job as a technical editor, at which he toils away while passion leaks out of his marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then Lowell discovers a beautiful crumbling mansion in a decaying and crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, and against all advice, sinks his every penny into buying it. He quits his job, moves in, and spends all his time on demolition and construction. His mission in life is to restore this house to its past grandeur. This American boy wants to fix what's gone wrong with his life. He wants to make good, and he will even murder to do it.
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