Walking Small

by L.J. Davis

214 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1974

About the author

Lawrence James Davis, better known as L. J. Davis, was an American writer, whose novels focussed on Brooklyn, New York.

Davis's novel, A Meaningful Life, described by the Village Voice as a "scathing 1971 satire about a reverse-pioneer from Idaho who tries to redeem his banal existence through the renovation of an old slummed-up Brooklyn town house", was reissued in 2009, with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem. Lethem, a childhood friend of one of Davis's sons, praised the novel in an essay about Brooklyn authors, which resulted in New York Review Books Classics reprinting it after nearly 40 years.

Davis has been a resident of Brooklyn since 1965. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975 to write fiction, but then began to write journalism, notably for Harper's Magazine.

Davis died at his home in Brooklyn on April 6, 2011.

Reviews

[🐴 🍖]

v v funny... maybe a hair less so than cowboys don't cry but i'm still devastated that the l.j. davis novel spigot turned off after this. i mean it's got a plot to dose the guy's landlord with lsd for crying out loud! on the other hand i gotta lodge a complaint re: the line about how coffin's cousin "want[ed] to be raped" -- which, yeah, is a queasy-making subtext in a lot of stuff of this era, but having it not just as subtext but actual text really gives it that extra "yikes" factor. that being said i still think nyrb is off their collective rocker for only reissuing a meaningful life.....smdh