"Just so. I am what I am. To look for ‘reasons’ is beside the point."

This is a cruel book populated by cruel characters whose hearts, for the most part, stay cold and brutish even in the desert's blistering heat. I have enjoyed Didion’s essays, so I was expecting some of the themes, but I had not prepared myself for something so delirious and fragmented. I should admit that I was not always sure I knew what was going on. It is nasty and brutish, and I loved it.

The story plays out in the form of 84 snapshots, most of which are no more than a few pages long. A few are written in the first person, but most follow the tragic protagonist, Maria, in the third person, as she spins from trouble to trouble. The snapshots jump around in time, and we rarely get a clear sense of chronology. Maria spends a lot of time aimlessly driving around and the reader is likewise carted chaotically from location to location, from LA to Las Vegas to the Mojave Desert, from a psychiatric hospital to swanky bars and run-down motel rooms. A core set of characters slip in and out of Maria’s life and they remain slippery: it takes time to figure out who each of them are. We get glimpses of their own lives, but we only really see them as they exist in relation to the increasingly solipsistic Maria - mostly cajoling, commanding, bullying her.

Didion’s prose is stunning. So much remains so well unsaid. Didion can pack so much into a single short sentence:

“‘I love you,’ she whispered, but it was more a plea than a declaration and in any case he made no response.”

The fragmentation of the narrative allows us to inhabit Maria’s chaos and isolation. The sparsity of details we get regarding the people in her life - mostly via snatches of dialogue - make us feel as isolated as she is. While her destructive behaviour may frustrate us at times, it is easy to feel compassion when we see what she is up against.

This book was written before Roe v. Wade. That made much of what happens a big eye opener for me and I am sure that will stay with me always.

miss didion ate and left no crumbs

Brilliant. I’m obsessed.

even better upon 2nd read

Gambling, domestic violence, sexual abuse, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, insanity, depression, snakes, suicide. These are all elements of Play It As It Lays, and much, much more. This is stark, wide-eyed, slap in the face prose that grabs the reader and holds you from beginning to end. It's not a pleasant read, no way. Watching Maria Wyeth's life unfold is like watching the proverbial train wreck that you can't look away from. Set in the 1960's, it's about Hollywood and the movie industry; it's about Las Vegas and gambling; but mostly it's about the life of a not so famous actress who is lost in the darkest corners of these places, and in the darkest corners of life. Joan Didion is at her best here, the writing is superb and it's definitely worthy of being called a modern classic. 4.5 stars.

n  So that she would not have to stop for food she kept a hard-boiled egg on the passenger seat of the Corvette. She could shell and eat a hard-boiled egg at seventy miles an hour (crack it on the steering wheel, never mind salt, salt bloats, no matter what happened she remembered her body).n

Which author could possibly begin a novel with the words:

What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.

Well surprisingly enough Joan Didion. And these words set in motion the inevitable direction that this book is going to take.

When Didion wrote this book, she was thirty-five and had moved a few years before with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, to Los Angeles where they were to spend twenty years working in the film industry;

The review on the back cover portrays quite succinctly the atmosphere of the setting of this book:

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, “Play It as It Lays” captures the mood of an entire generation, the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that both blisters and haunts the reader.

This was the period when the pill for contraceptive purposes had been in place for nearly a decade. This was meant to emancipate women and stop the worry of unnecessary pregnancies, however, as with many “modern” occurrences in life, problems did occur.

Maria (“that is pronounced Mar-eye-ah, to get it straight at the outset” – I love this attention to detail!) Wyeth is a thirty-one year old, somewhat failed actress, married to, and then divorced from Carter, a film director. She is indeed cool at times in trying to keep her emotions in check but nevertheless she fails miserably.

When the book begins, she is in some kind of psychiatric hospital and prior to this her friends had been so concerned for her safety, that when an intolerable situation occurred she inevitably turned up there. I found her entire lifestyle terrifying. Speed on the freeway was of major importance to her – she drove to places like someone demented, like a bat out of hell; it seemed that she had to keep the adrenaline flowing. Then her mood could unaccountably turn to another extreme with the realisation that life was futile and meant nothing. She cried a lot and on one occasion bled a lot. That was a mesmerising part of this book. Sex came and went and was all rather meaningless. The relationship with her husband Carter ended in divorce and I’m unsure who left whom but their situation was dire. Constant attempts at reconciliation failed as there was such hatred it was impossible to overcome.

There’s a rather strange relationship between Maria, Carter and BZ (bisexual movie producer, BZ -an abbreviation for benzodiazepines, sedative drugs) and his wife Helena. I was unsure what was really going on there.

Maria’s childhood was rather unusual. Her father had been a gambler, winning a town – Silver Wells - that began with twenty-eight individuals but was soon zero. As he had gambled away his Reno house, he recalled that he owned a town and so they lived there.

Kate, Maria’s four year old daughter is in a clinic with an imprecise disorder. Carter was responsible for her being there and Maria is trying to get her out. She plays only for Kate.

My feelings towards Maria and BZ changed dramatically from confusion and coldness to a sudden sense of place in regard to admiration for their identical views on existence on this earth. It could be seen that they had this kind of symbiotic relationship:

“I never expected you to fall back on style as an argument.”

“I’m not arguing.”

“I know that. You think I’d be here if I didn’t know that?”

She took his hand and held it? “Why are you here?”

“Because you and I, we know something. Because we’ve been out there where nothing is. Because I wanted – you know why.”

This novel is very symbolic with references to rattle snacks and also in the biblical sense; dreams, music and speed.

The prose throughout the novel is not only riveting reading but so stark in its intensity that it disturbed me no end. Nevertheless this has certainly put me on track to read more of Didion’s works, both fiction and non-fiction. She has such a style about her, which can indeed flow from one extreme to the other but with so much depth.

Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion

Maria is the central character in this fascinating but miserable story about a young ‘wanna be’ actress married to Carter, the Director of her only two movies (one unreleased). This couple have a young daughter Kate, living in a mental institution. There’s a whole cast of unsavoury people in Maria’s life – such as her bitchy ‘friend’ Helene and her abusive husband BZ. Maria has sex with a married man, who’s child she is carrying – she is forced to have an abortion (scrape, scrape), a very unpleasant scene. Maria has an agent who seems to be the only person interested in helping her, however, his motivation is probably to protect Carter’s image. She has a creepy, disgusting neighbour and an old friend of her father’s drops into and out of her life.

This story is melancholic, dark, violent, and miserable – a stark contrasts to the glamour and faux happiness of Hollywood. Maria passively moves through this story as a lifeless, limp, victim of emotional and verbal humiliation and physical abuse. Her relationship with Carter is damaging and wretched. Her husband and her friends always seem baffled and annoyed at Maria’s lack of concern or interest in anything. She just doesn’t care. The question I have is, is this a product of her environment or was she like this anyway?

Even her time with the troubled Kate, is horrible and upsetting. To maintain some sort of structure and routine in her life, Maria drives the freeways around California, starting at the same time every day. She drives all day, in her Corvette, going nowhere in particular.

I am new to Didion, this being my first foray into her work. Thanks to GR mate Mary who also recommended I watch a documentary about her, one quickly discovers she is a fascinating free spirit who seems obsessed with the disorder and dysfunction of individuals and society. This is typified in this sad story, as we see the dismantling of Maria as she wallows in a broken world.

This passage typifies Maria’s antipathy towards everything, her penchant for doing nothing:

For the rest of the time Maria was in Las Vegas she wore dark glasses. She did not decide to stay in Vegas: she only failed to leave

Even though this part of America is sunny, I imagined this story to be in black and white – grainy at that.

Play it as it Lays is a very powerful story and it deserves to be read and re-read. There is so much more to learn about this interesting author and her work.

5-Stars

The nihilism that clings to the protagonist Maria Wyeth throughout this book is like an oppressive coating over her whole being. Maria’s disaffection with her life and the moral ambiguity of the world she inhabits is almost too depressing to read about. Maria is incapable of connecting with anyone. You could say she is in a perpetual lock-down. To illustrate that, let me quote the last paragraph of the book:
“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing.
Why, BZ would say.
Why not, I say.”

i can't think of much to say about this book that hasn't already been said. this was my first introduction to the creative genius that is joan didion, and oh how grateful i am that it was.

this novel expertly captures the essence of a tortured woman in a man's world. it tackles many heavy subjects - such as depression, abuse, and abortion - in a beautifully poetic manner. it manages to keep the tone light while capturing the mental turmoil of a woman on a (very) downward spiral.

didion succeeded in grabbing my attention with this book, keeping it until the very end, something which is, admittedly, quite difficult as i have a relatively short attention span. i had to wrestle with my psyche in order to put it down at appropriate times, such as when i needed to sleep, and failed miserably. i was entranced by the quick wit and clever wordplay displayed in this book, even in moments which were quite heavy and thus difficult to sit through.

the pages truly came to life in my mind as i was transported to late 1960s los angeles, a place (and time) i have never experienced but felt, by the end, i knew as well as any other. during the first 20 pages, i knew this would soon be my new favourite book, and i was not mistaken. i understand now why didion is beloved by readers all over the world, and i am excited to make my way through the rest of her catalogue.

3.5/5 Stars.

This is a fierce, sordid little novel about a woman in crisis. It takes place in 1960s Hollywood, where Maria, a struggling actress unhappily married to a movie director, engages in a series of self-destructive behaviors that culminate in her being committed.

Maria is the kind of apathetic, amoral, detached woman you could picture hanging out with Patrick Bateman. In fact, this reminded me quite a bit of Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero or even JG Ballard's Crash. There's a pervasive sense of utter detachment, emptiness and ennui verging on destruction.

In sparse, vivid prose, Didion paints a bleak portrait of 1960s LA and the dismal fate of a woman who fit the role of neither glamorous actress nor domestic wife.

I imagine this book packed quite the punch upon its release, and it clearly influenced many books that followed it. The problem, for me, was that it was nothing I hadn't encountered before. This, of course, is no fault of Didion's, but unfortunately it tamed some of the novel's viciousness.

I'm glad I read it though. And at a lean 213 pages, it was a quick read.

Absolutely incredible. The picture of Los Angeles and Palm Springs and everything in between. I can’t wait to read it again. I just can’t.

It's probably not cricket to give away the last, or nearly last line of a book, but this packs a punch: "I know what 'nothing' means, and keep on playing."

So what does one say about a book that is at once and the same time equally infuriating and incisive and compelling? The background is, after all, Hollywood and so by extension the ennui of the heroine is supposed to be seen as heroic, eg., she's genuine when everyone else is phony. But I think she's just as phony. Having the backdrop and the supporting characters be the movie biz - I mean, it's kind of a straw man, right? It's always easy to make anyone in this milieu look false, shallow, "unowned" by themselves - and even the most vacuous rebel by contrast seems more authentic. I think they call this shooting fish in a barrel. I'm sure that in the process Didion settled a lot of old scores.
And I would object to being brought into that process if she didn't have the mad skills that she does. But she does, and there's much that astonishes in this portrait of uncompromising madness. I was reminded at times of Updike and Salinger, the frankness of tone and the rejection of expectation. It's a fast read, a tour de force. Hard to put down even as you sometimes feel nauseous.