n  

‘All that day Maria thought of foetuses in the East River, translucent as jellyfish, floating past the big sewage outfalls with the orange peels.’

n
Didion’s book made me feel like ‘rain’ listlessly battering away at a glass pane (Didion’s book) fully knowing that we’ll never ever mesh. And then I evaporate and go my own way after leaving my dirty water marks (this review) on it. I just never imagined myself to be an (not a ‘hater’ but) indifferent reader of Didion’s work. I just feel nothing for it. Not ‘moved’ at all. Might elaborate/post my notes/thoughts about it, but none of them are flattering/‘nice’ comments, so probably not necessary at all.

n  

‘The stillness and clarity of the air seemed to rob everything of its perspective, seemed to alter all perception of depth, and Maria drove as carefully as if she were reconnoitering an atmosphere without gravity. Taco Bells jumped out at her. Oil rockers creaked ominously. For miles before she reached the Thriftimart she could see the big red T, a forty-foot cutout letter which seemed peculiarly illuminated against the harsh unclouded light of the afternoon sky.’

n

(Okay, maybe just allow this one…) Didion is just not for me. I’ve read one essay collection and one novel now. Reading Didion made me crave for (Ottessa) Moshfegh to fuck me up, again. It also makes me feel well primed/ready for (Vladimir) Sorokin.. Didion’s writing (to me/in my opinion) just isn’t ‘textured’, ‘multi-layered’ enough for me; and well I suppose, not quite ‘sensuous’ (in every sense of the word but without a dominant emphasis on the literal/physical). Bone-dry carcass; no funk, no meat. The characters just felt so unbearably one-dimensional. Ultimately, I just lack whatever it requires to ‘appreciate’ the ‘clean’ simplicity of her work. Been whetted on ‘dirty’ literature for too long, and this simply doesn’t cut it for me. I had wanted to be the kind reader who enjoys Didion, so badly. And maybe that's exactly why I can't do it. I only like the thought of liking her.

n  

‘All along she had expected to die, as surely as she expected that planes would crash if she boarded them in bad spirit, as unquestionably as she believed that loveless marriage ended in cancer of the cervix and equivocal adultery in fatal accidents to children. Maria did not particularly believe in rewards, only in punishments, swift and personal.’

n


To reiterate, I truly would have liked to be a Didion ‘fan’, but it is what it is. Maybe I’ll try one more of her essay collections when I am able to/start to remember less of how disappointing this was (for me). In other words, I need to develop a fresh state of ‘delusion’ to try again. And finally, reading this made me realise that I should’ve just re-watched ‘Nocturnal Animals’ by Tom Ford instead if I wanted to experience ‘beauty’ in a similar vein (but completely different ‘concept’?). But of course, I wouldn’t have known this without ‘hindsight’. In any case though, I am glad that this book was able to bring some ‘joy’/emotional resonance to other readers (esp. GR friends). I am really just not the right ‘reader’ for it/her. At least it was a very, very quick read (for me anyway).

Well, now I know where Brett Easton Ellis got the inspiration for "Less Than Zero". Except Joan Didion is a much, much better writer than him.

what the fuck was this book about !!!

You ever notice how almost every review you’ll read of a Joan Didion book calls her “intelligent,” or says that she writes “intelligent prose”? That must get to you. No wonder all of her heroines take pills.

It’s true, though, she does have an awful big brain for such a little lady. And yeah, L.A. is scary, and there isn’t really anyone who conveys that better than her…except maybe Philip K. Dick, who isn’t literally writing about L.A., but come on.

But, I don’t know, as good as the technique is here, as cool and interesting and cutting as the writing is, I still found it a little whiny and trivial and frustrating at times. But that’s probably my fault - I have no doubt that’s because I’m not able to grasp the impact it must have had when it first came out, how shocking it must have been, how our mothers and their friends probably passed this around and the sense of deliverance they probably experienced. I’m not saying it’s a case of “how far we’ve come,” as probably the fact that we’re now able to talk about these things more upfront-ly and with less direct punishment doesn’t translate to the majority of women in this country, but maybe that’s why it’s largely unpleasant to read – the arguments she’s making are old arguments, we still don’t have any solutions, so rehashing them is just depressing and futile.

Whereas "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" was like an epic, devastating requiem to California and the ‘60s, "Play it as it Lays" is more like a really good Elliot Smith song. You recognize it’s good, the first three times you listen to it you feel like it’s maybe the cleverest, saddest shit out there, but then you kind of stop listening to it; the place of pain and toxicity from which it emerged, and the fact that it’s a little too close to home is too much to have in your life and thoughts on a regular basis.

I read this a while ago, but the general feeling of it has stuck with me and become part of my DNA, like all good novels. It captures a realistic feeling of female ennui in the piling on of little humiliations and blows, and is part of the canon that I call "women's writing that tells on men." The main character is rich, white, and pretty, but living in a man's world as a neglected wife to a Hollywood asshole has rendered her catatonic and depressed.

I remember adult women like this when I was a child: ultra-feminine, performing a role, but clearly unhappy. And their husbands were oblivious to their pain; indeed, they seemed to be gloating over their power over their wives, over having cowed them into submission. Drinking, talking animatedly about their work, virile, having affairs, reveling in the playground that was a man's world. That's what this novel represents: the selfish freedom of men put under a spotlight, in an era in which writers like Faulkner, Hemingway, Mailer, and Lawrence were the literary heroes. Here the writing is from the point of view of the quiet, suffering, invisible woman, and her voice tells us that these male heroes aren't all that wonderful, at least as far as their wives are concerned.

Sometimes I was irritated with the cool girl tone, but then I remembered how the women of that era used the mannequin persona as a defense, the way every generation of women has its own distinct defenses. But it doesn't get any easier, because the patriarchy just keeps varying its onslaught, like viruses that mutate with each new vaccine.

wow okay, I need a minute to formulate my thoughts on this one

n  

n    Always when I play back my father's voice it is with a professional rasp, it goes as it lays, don't do it the hard way... I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and I keep on playing.n  

n
This novel from Didion goes way beyond bleak into nihilism, but with just that touch of almost despairing stoicism that keeps Maria from the ultimate self-destruction. Or is it that even killing herself is too active a decision for Maria to be able to make? First published in 1970, it offers up a stark portrait of an America that belies all the flower-power optimism we associate with California in the 1960s.

Set against a backdrop of Hollywood, sun, Las Vegas and the Nevada desert, this feels utterly contemporary from Didion's pared back, bruising prose, to the self-alienated women playing the modelling/acting/party-girl games, directed by powerful men who hold the chips and who dish out film parts and jewellery as pacifiers.

The discussions of mental health and illegal abortion must have been more shocking at the time than they are now, though Didion uses them powerfully to indict a culture that looks as if it is booming (fast cars, highways, flashy restaurants, big houses, expensive hotels and casinos) but which is shown to be emotionally hollow and worthless beyond a material sense. As readers today, we're also aware of Vietnam hovering over the story.

The typography, with its short chapters and paragraphs stranded on white pages, echoes the empty spaces of the story, making this a fast read but a deeply affecting one. File it on your bookshelves after The Great Gatsby and The Bell Jar.

Joan Didion is a brilliant and fascinating writer. Her writing is razor sharp and dissects American culture in a way that is both blistering and brutally refreshing. Her journalism is of great importance, with her being responsible for the earliest mainstream media article suggesting The Central Park Five had been wrongly convicted and her reportage that brought Californian subcultures to the forefront in the 1960s.

Play It As It Lays is set in 1960's California and opens with the story of Maria Wyeth, a 30-something has-been actress who is recovering from a mental breakdown in a psychiatric hospital. The novel then moves back in time to before the hospital, to grim but glamourous Hollywood as Maria's career slows and personal life collapses. As well as featuring an inner monologue from Maria and short reminiscences from both her best friend and her ex-husband, Play It As It Lays is narrated from a third-person perspective in eighty-four chapters of terse, controlled and highly visual prose. This is quite typical of Didion who, as a writer, is concerned with the importance of the way sentences work within a text.

This book is quietly terrifying. Maria's disintegration and descent into madness - her abortion; the end of her marriage; her aimless drives around Hollywood freeways, pistol in hand; her lost weeks in Las Vegas - serves to highlight a society devoid of principles and an acknowledgement of the belief in the absolute meaninglessness of life.

Play It As It Lays is certainly not an uplifting read but you won't be able to tear your eyes away from it. It is a startling and poignant exploration of the struggle between self and society and the difference between living and merely surviving. A 'beautiful disaster'. Suggested soundtrack: Lana Del Rey, of course.

3.5 Stars

“I am what I am. To look for reasons is beside the point.”

Play It As It Lays is a very eccentric book and unlike anything I have ever read. The writing in this is phenomenal - I felt like I understood the premise of the story even though I wasn't really sure of what exactly was going on in the plot and who the characters were.

I really understood what was going on in Maria's head and Didion did a good job of detailing what its really like to feel like you're losing your mind. It's like she was able to write out emotions that I know I have felt before but was never able to articulate in the same way that Didion did in this book.

Although I thought the writing was phenomenal, I had a hard time following the plot and understanding other characters' relationships to Maria, so it made it less of an enjoyable read for me. However, I am glad I read it, and look forward to reading more by Joan Didion in the future because of her writing style. I recommend if you're looking for something different!

rip joan didion<3

Puede que Joan Didion sea un icono de las letras norteamericanas, pero a mí esta novela me ha parecido un chasco monumental. No es más que un clásico intento de retratar la industria del cine y sus podridas entrañas a través de una prometedora actriz venida a menos, hastiada, oprimida, narcotizada y de la que todo el mundo abusa sin que pueda hacer nada por evitarlo. Didion denuncia la hipocresía de una sociedad que se dice liberal, pero que demuestra todo lo contrario coartando la libertad de las mujeres, anulando su capacidad de decisión y reduciéndolas a un mero elemento decorativo en manos de productores y ejecutivos sin escrúpulos. Sin embargo, los medios que utiliza Didion para retratar esta realidad me han resultado prosaicos, la trama absolutamente incorpórea y el estilo narrativo banal, inane, raquítico. No encuentro profundidad en los personajes ni en los argumentos. Las escenas se suceden sin que haya un hilo conductor entre ellas... en fin, un desastre absoluto que al menos tiene la decencia de ser breve.

I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?

2.5/5 Stars

I felt incredibly dicked around while reading Play It as It Lays. I read all of it – a good sign for me – but I still felt dicked. I was getting rather restless at times, and I was also reminded of Hemingway (whom I loathe, and whom I believe Ms Didion aspires to be). I just wanted something more to happen! I wanted to feel something more for Maria (ma-ri-a?). Granted, I did feel something, but not enough. Quality review, I know.

Let’s jump into specifics. Let’s also compare this to Less Than Zero, which was clearly influenced by this. Less Than Zero manages to make me feel incredibly sad for its disenfranchised, disaffected, discombobulated youth. The main character doesn’t even know anything about his younger sisters, he goes to parties and has sex with men and women and it’s all just a big nihilistic void. Awesome. There’s a void in Play It as It Lays, and some of the prose is pretty damn good, but it’s missing something.

I was reminded of Hemingway for the very sparse prose and short chapter lengths, which I’m totally okay with but feel Hemingway completely botched. I think Didion does it better, but there’s still a disconnect here, a seemingly unintentional meaninglessness to the whole work. Didion attempts to shock the reader with how empty this story is but, as I know all too well, even the most empty of stories should have something going for them. I now refer to chapter 52 of Play It as It Lays:

Maria made a list of things she would never do. She would never: walk through Sands or Caesar’s alone after midnight. She would never: ball at a party, do S-M unless she wanted to, borrow furs from Abe Lipsey, deal. She would never: carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills.

That’s it, and I don’t care for it at all. Oh, shush you, it’s stylistic, it’s cool. That’s fine to be stylistic, but it shouldn’t overwhelm the story, or at the very least the characters. The above chapter is so overwhelming as to come across pretentious. Thankfully the entire book isn’t at that level of pretentious Hemingway-crap, but it does lapse into it too much. I imagine Joan Didion at her typewriter writing it out…

“Hmm, I want to make this short segment edgy, real edgy. Let’s see, what would Maria never do … yeah that’s a good idea. She would never walk through Sands or Caesar’s, of course not, no, no, she’d never do that. And she would never, ever ball at a party, no, that’s for-”

“DIDION!”

Didion starts back from her typewriter, looking around crazily.

“Who’s there?” Didion asks, frightened.

“It’s me, Isaac, I’m reviewing your book, Play It as It Lays.”

Didion makes a confused face. “But I haven’t even finished it yet?”

“N-never mind that,” I say, “what’s that bit you’re working on have to do with the story?”

Didion thinks for a moment. “I’m not sure.”

“So why are you writing it?” I ask in my ethereal voice from above.

“I wanted to do an edgy thing; I wanted to do a ruthless dissection of American life.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure.” Didion repeats.

And so do I recommend it? Well, I’d recommend Less Than Zero first, and if you liked that, well, in the words of Ms Didion ... I’m not sure. There’s good and bad to the book and, in this rare case, the good and bad kind of even out and neutralize each other.

Play it as it Lays' by Joan Didion is a brilliant literary novel. Didion is a superb writer. However, her main character in this novel, a minor Hollywood celebrity, is a waster to me. I despised her. The sixties was not a good time to be an actress. Sexual predation was common no matter how talented a performer was. But I don't think that is what this book is about.

I have seen many reviews on this novel. Some are very sympathetic, unlike me, to the main character, thirty-one-year-old Maria Wyeth. She was born in Reno, Nevada. Her father, a gambler, lost their Reno home and the family moved to a town, Silver Wells, pop. 28, because her father owned the town. Her father taught her "I was raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what went out on the last." Her father moved them to a cattle ranch, to a ski resort - she can't remember all of the places. She went to New York after high school graduation to be an actress, a plan her mother may have set in motion because she was a starstruck fan of Hollywood. Her mother entered every magazine contest that offered trips to famous overseas cities.

Maria was a model in New York for awhile until she learned her mother died in a car wreck. The death of her mother seems to me the last time this woman was authentically moved by anything emotionally. After this, her life is mechanical, numbed by booze, pills, and fucking. She had been with a man, Ivan Costello, in New York but after her mother died she met Carter Lang, movie producer, and married him. They move to Los Angeles. She has a mentally-disabled daughter, Kate, who is institutionalized. She constantly visits her daughter, seemingly worried about her, but frankly, it doesn't feel as if she really sees her daughter - it is more as if to Maria her daughter is a mirror image reflecting what Maria fears she is seeing of herself. Other than this supposed concern for Kate, Maria acts to kill off all of her emotion through sex, booze and pills. She succeeds wildly.

With a couple of movies on her resume - typical of the 1960's - a documentary about Maria, where the camera follows her around New York working as a model (which she can't stand to watch), and a Hollywood sexploitation movie where Maria is gangraped by a motorcycle gang (she likes to watch this one, thinking her character was strong and determined, "the girl on the screen seemed to have a definite knack for controlling her own destiny."), Maria is, finally, disintegrating, hollowed out.

Maria drinks a lot, takes pills, fucks strange men despite that she is married. Besides visiting her daughter, she enjoys getting behind the wheel of her car to drive mindlessly for hours. She and her husband have a friendship with another couple, they all fuck each other in various combos in drunken mistakes, and finally Carter wants a divorce after they try to 'make love' with each other. Carter wants the divorce because Maria is like a vegetable during sex.

There is an actual terrible trauma, which puts Maria into a mental institution finally, which is what the book starts with in the first chapter - Maria in an institution, writing in a journal as ordered. There is a chapter narrated by Marie's closest 'friend', Helene, and by Carter.

Some readers see this novel as an indictment of Celebrity Fame or of the soul-destroying prostitution required of those trying to become a celebrity or a performer, of doing the ass-kissing/begging rounds actors/singers/models/dancers do under the direction of directors/producers/agents who often mix business with sexual predation. I think this book asks the question what kind of person is it who sometimes find themselves in the milieu of an actor?

I think this is a chicken-or-egg puzzle of what came first? Did Maria hollow out emotionally from her life experiences or was she born naturally hollowed out? Did she always float in the backwash of people around her, just going along? In finding herself without anyone she cared enough about nearby to float along after, deserted by everyone once her physical beauty began to diminish (a Vegas character says she thinks Maria is 36 years old - she is 31) and bridges were burned, the nothingness that was her took over completely?

How can some people be so entirely without curiosity or hopes or self-direction when graphic drama or trauma has not happened to them? I know these people exist, and I believe Didion was profiling such a one in this novel. A 'beautiful person.' I think some people, if beautiful, are unlucky in having only outer Beauty to define themselves. Inside is only a sterile wasteland where a person is supposed to be. Are other people at fault for taking unknowing advantage of an adult who is an empty husk inside? To whom being responsible for themselves or anyone else has no meaning? We are not talking about a psychopath, but something else. Clinically depressed AND narcissistic? Idk.

Wow.

I thought I'd include the Wikipedia link for the game of Craps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craps