"ورثت ملامحي من أمي، كما ورثت منها قابلية إصابتي بالشقيقة. ومن أبي ورثت تفاؤلًا لم يهجرني إلا مؤخرًا".

تبدأ الكاتبة الشهيرة "جون ديديون" السرد بمشهد بطلة الرواية "ماريا" في مصحة للأمراض العقلية، وحديث النفس وبعض شذرات ملغزة منها ومن "هيلين" و"كارتر" و"بي زي"؛ عندما تكمل القراءة سيكتمل المشهد لك كقطع البازل في نهاية السرد الروائي وعليك استرجاع المقدمة مرة أخرى لاستيعاب الأحداث. "ماريا" وهي ممثلة تعيش في كاليفورنيا وزوجها "كارتر" مخرج أفلام و"بي زي" المنتج وصديقهم وزوجته "هيلين"، وأشخاص محيطين بها كل منهم له دور في حياة "ماريا"، وابنة مريضة بالولادة بعيدة عنها في مستشفى للعناية بالأطفال المرضى.

"أنا لم أخطط قط لمستقبلي في هذه الحياة. فإن الخطط لا تعني شيئًا، ولا تجدي نفعًا".

مع مواصلة القراءة تستشعر عالم هوليوود المخملي وجو الستينيات الأمريكي المشهور، من خواء روحي وحفلات ماجنة ومخدرات وعلاقات مفتوحة وخيانة، مع تشريح لحياة كئيبة حزينة، وتهكم وسخرية بين السطور للحياة الأمريكية في تلك الفترة الصعبة، وما كان يواجه ذلك الجيل من تحديات حياتية ورأسمالية، لا ترحم وحرب ڤيتنام والخروج من بوتقة السُلطة المهيمنة، مع الاتجاه للتحرر من كل شئ، حالة مزاجية لجيل كامل آنذاك بدون رتوش وتجميل.

إذًا كانت الحياة بالنسبة لماريا كالقمار وعليها لعب لعبة الحياة كيفما اتفق، فالعدمية هي ثيمة الرواية مع استنتاجات أن الحياة لا معنى لها وأن الجميع سأم التظاهر بخلاف ذلك. هذا الكشف سيكون له عواقبه في نهاية الرواية "التوقف عن ممارسة اللعبة". أما ماريا فعرفت معنى اللاشئ، وستظل صامدة في هذه اللعبة! وتعيشها كما هي، لأن أسئلة الحياة صعبة والأجوبة غير متفق عليها من الجميع.

حظيت الرواية باهتمام القراء والنقاد آنذاك وكانت صرخة موجعة في وجه المجتمع، وتم تحويلها لفيلم عام 1972، كتبت له السيناريو "ديديون" وزوجها الكاتب "جون دون". رواية في زمن كتابتها غير تقليدية تفتتح وتختتم بضمير المتكلم، وتحتوي على 84 فصلًا، الكثير منها لا يتعدى الصفحة الواحدة. فهو سرد بصري؛ الحوار هو اللاعب الأساسي ومشاهد سينمائية على الورق. أيضًا أعطت ديديون لماريا بعض من صفاتها الشخصية كالسن ومكان المعيشة والابنة الوحيدة وحياة المشاهير، بل وسيارتها الكورڤيت الشهيرة.

"جون ديديون" أيقونة عصرها وواحدة من أصحاب الصحافة الجديدة في تلك الفترة، وفتحت العيون على جهات مختلفة في الحياة، أسلوب نثري متميز، مع وصف سلوك الآخرين بحنكة وتهكم بين السطور لمجتمع وحشي لا يرحم. قد تشعر أن الرواية ساذجة أو لا معنى لها ومبتذلة؛ ولكن المحتوى الداخلي للسرد له وقع على النفس بقتامته، يجعلك تفكر في نهايات البشر وسلوكهم العام الحزين وعبثية الحياة.

الترجمة رائعة لعماد العتيلي، تنم عن فهم المجتمع الأمريكي وأسلوب ديديون الإيحائي، ونقل كلمات الكاتبة ذات تقنية الكتابة والسرد متعدد المستويات؛ بل عليك اكتشاف المقصد المخفي للكلمات كقارئ.

"تعامل مع الأشياء كما هي، كيفما اتفق، ولا تستسلم".

الأغنية المصاحبة:
All Tomorrow’s Parties - The Velvet Underground

Are writers born or made? Usually I would say that they are mostly made or it’s a mixture of both: one has to possess a certain talent, but it requires a lot of hard work to harness that talent, that passion, those skills, those experiences, what have you.

Reading Play It As It Lays and watching a documentary about Joan Didion, this writer’s case might almost make me think otherwise - her talent seems incredibly effortless. With Didion’s natural observation skills, she wrote from an early age and when it came to winning prestigious internships and publishing articles in important magazines she made it seem like there is nothing to it. Even off duty, she kept on working and writing, that’s what she was and what she did. She might be an epitome of natural writing talent, but it is her dedication to writing which I find truly astonishing. To be a writer, you must write.

In Play It As It Lays we find aspiring actress Maria stuck in a vicious circle which coils around her like a snake. If you don’t play the game, life will spit you out.

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


↑Marcel Duchamp playing chess with nude Eve Babitz, 1963. Maria, is that you? Later Babitz wrote about this experience in Esquire.

Even though Maria knows the rules and holds all the aces, it is a game of minor roles, party girls, abusive partners, drugs and abortions. Set in the 60s’ California and hiding behind a simple premise of a Hollywood Dream narrative gone sour, it’s a devastating portrayal of a woman’s fall into madness, decadence and self-destruction. Well, almost - an outrageous indifference becomes Maria’s suit of armour, mastering “nothing” becomes her salvation.

I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.

But, does “nothing” last forever?

There is a certain sense of beauty and nostalgia in the details of the times Didion depicts in this novel, yet I feel she does so not in order to romanticize the decadence, but bring all its undercurrents: misogyny, homophobia, inequality, ennui and despair contrasting with the flashy world of promised dreams.



↑Female bodies as Living Paintbrushes in Yves Klein’s live musical art performance, 1960.

Didion’s prose is not exactly austere, but it does feel emotionally detached and, at the same time, highly allusive. I’d say there is a rare combination of both detachment and empathy in her work.

On the surface, the composition of Play It As It Lays seems rather minimalistic or even beyond minimalistic. Moreover, there is an interesting play of positive and negative, a sort of re-definition of what could be considered positive or negative. Sometimes in painting or even photography, we can find a negative space or an empty space which is not just a mere background - it can be perceived as a positive agent, just as important as what could be considered a subject. It reminded me of yohaku no bi, “beauty of empty space” in Japanese. I think it’s quite unlikely that Didion was inspired by it, yet the concept of empty space present in this novel is of a similar nature. It is possible to find this idea in other arts and fields, another example in music, where a pause, an interval or a silence can be equally important. And in this case with the written word - it takes a rare talent to pull it off. Well, Didion succeeds quite masterfully - in Play It As It Lays a space of “nothingness” in between and within the text has a voice of its own.


↑My Work is My Body, My Body is My Work, Helena Almeida, first solo exhibition in 1967

This is my second Didion (and happens to be the third book with serpent allusions this year!), so I’m excited there are some more of her works to look forward to. Play It As It Lays is a piece which will stay with me for a long time and I can imagine myself re-reading it in the future.

All the stars, Joan.

So much rich setting and character study in so few words. Wow. This is a pretty short read about an actress who feels unfulfilled in her life, career, and relationships. In the 60s era of Hollywood, the starlets are never as happy as they seem, and everyone is up to some dark shit.

I just recently read Valley of the Dolls this month, and I would like to say that Play It As It Lays is a condensed version of this story. It’s incredible how Didion is able to make literally every sentence relevant to the story. What we have is the foundation of a character, and all the minuscule details (be them a word or two) create a world that we can get lost in. Seeing our main character Maria hopelessly go through the motions of her life is a bit heart-wrenching. Whether she is surrounded by happiness or destruction, all she feels is “nothing,” which makes for both a unique and relatable character.

I personally love stories about late 20th century music/film industries along with their dark sides, and this was able to provide. Really enjoyed it and would recommend for those who want to be introduced to this subgenre! Looking forward to reading more Didion.

Didion condenses the late 1960s Hollywood zeitgeist into overexposed snapshots of a life gone off the rails. A 30ish ex-model, sometimes-actress named Maria sleepwalks (or drives fast) through a haze of pills and alcohol as her marriage to a big-shot director crumbles and the movie-making jet set she runs with alternately frets over, ignores, and abuses her. She is haunted by a fraught personal history, including a troubled upbringing and an institutionalized daughter she rarely sees. If she'd been a failing social media influencer the book could've been written yesterday, minus the overt pre-#MeToo mindset among the male characters, 95% of whom would've been canceled shortly after opening their mouths. Short paragraphs for short attention spans, so why not dive in...

Il talento del dolore

Una narrazione da capogiro. Che dà il tormento. Didion conosce le persone, le vite, le parole, il dolore e la forza pervicace di raccontarlo. Mi sono ritrovato a rileggere più volte questi scarni paragrafi dalla soffocante avvenenza, pieni di aculei e tentacoli. Pagine, forse, da non rileggere: ci si può scottare. In mezzo alla calura del deserto del Nevada, alla roboante desolazione umana di ogni personaggio, alla lucidità del dramma, all’ineluttabilità di certi momenti, che poi si dilatano in giornate, tese verso il nulla, Joan Didion sferra l’infuocata nudità di un periodare singolare dalle suggestioni corali, e dagli echi plurimi. E divampa, implacabile, la consapevolezza del là dove nulla esiste. Sublime

What is it about sundrenched West Coast angst (occasionally spilling out into the Nevada desert) that keeps fascinating players and spectators alike throughout the decades?

The minute I reached the last page of this book I had to go back and start all over again. Now that I knew how this iconic 70s drama played out, I just had to examine, more attentively this time, Didion’s construction; how she had mounted her sentences, how she had managed to make the silences echo louder than all the words spoken, perhaps because they begged to be filled by the reader - and we all know how the sound of our own thoughts fills our mind more than those of anyone else’s.

In the current stifling heat of a Mediterranean July (which I frankly think is the most suitable setting for scenes apparently conceived in the same relentless conditions, an ocean and some decades away - but ok, you don’t have to migrate south in order to feel the coldness of detachment amidst the noise and the heat), in this heat that makes it so hard to concentrate, I had to start again and connect the pieces of Maria’s (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) story. How certain facts (and certain thoughts) brought her to the big, comforting, devastating “nothing” that haunts her from start to finish.

Didion was that writer who was herself haunted by the nothing she discerned in all the somethings of her immediate surroundings -and in the more distant ones, those of her era. Especially those. Her narrative style here is fragmentary and insinuating, at a time when this kind of storytelling was en vogue in the literary and movie worlds she was part of. Think late 60s early 70s films such as Klute, Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, Zabriskie Point.

At the time she was writing this, Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, lived in Malibu and mingled with the Hollywood circuit making their way into the business. In fact, two years after the publication of the book they cowrote the script for the film version, and I can’t help thinking she had that in mind all along. The scenes are so cinematically written, vignettes one would think were put together in a montage room, instead of a writer’s desk.



Miraculously, the movie is available on the internet. If you are curious, you can check it out here: https://archive.org/details/PlayItAsI...

I think it hasn’t aged as well as the book, but I enjoyed it as much for its 70s aura as for its perfect casting. Maria, the disillusioned actress who sedates her depression by aimlessly driving the Californian freeways in her Corvette, not even trying to find meaning in her crumbling life, is played by Tuesday Weld, an actress whose own  career and tumultuous personal life  have the makings of a gripping story. But, although we don’t really know what happens to Maria beyond the last page, Ms Weld, at 81, is still around. Her story is one of survival and quite inspiring at that. I guess the lesson Maria was taught by her gambler father early on (“You call it as you see it, and stay in the action.”) wasn’t lost on her impersonator.

I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing.
Why, BZ would say.
Why not, I say.

Gosh, I love Didion.



Lee Friedlander: America By Car, Whitney Museum of American Art



Tuesday Weld photographed by Dennis Hopper in 1965, seven years before the film, five before the book.

لهذه الرّواية خصوصيّة كبيرةٌ بالنّسبةِ لي وربّما أعُدُّها إحدى أصعب الأعمال التي ترجمتُها حتّى الآن، وذلكَ أنّ ترجمتَها (بدءًا من عنوانها) شكّلت لي تحدّيًا أتمنّى أنّني وُفّقتُ فيه.
جوان ديديون اسمٌ كبير، وهذه الرّوايةُ مُهمّة بلا شكّ. وغريبةٌ جدًّا ومُشَوِّشَةٌ جدًّا. ولكنّها على أيةِ حال، تستحقّ القراءة والتأمُّل.

do not read this book

READING VLOG

The first time I read this was in the summer between coming out of high school and going into university.
All was tense.
Nothing felt of great change.
I was merely moving from one school to another, one city to another.
But with the 8 hour drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I drifted in and out of hot sleep in between these pages. It dulled me. But there was something so electric about it as well. And by the end, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew who I wanted to embody.

“

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

joan didion really was a master of her craft. she easily inserts you into a place and a characters psychology as said character battles depression whilst combatting loneliness and isolation. mesmerising writing that will leave a long-lasting impression both on and with you.

Devastating.

Lots of people try to get that anemic, quietly desperate, call of the void, decadent Hollywood thing, but it's not as easy to pull off as it sounds.

This book is the evil fairy grandmother of that whole genre.

Joan Didion’s second novel, published 1970, and it’s a masterpiece. It sears - bleak is not the word. The narrative, prose and technique are cut to the bone. At this distance it feels entirely true to its soul-burning-in-California subject. From the accolades it received back then, it seems the story also hit the nerve for readers at the time. The treatment is utterly without sentiment. The structure is cannily set up as murder mystery and doesn’t disappoint.

My sole regret is that I didn’t discover it long ago. Quite wonderful, and on this showing leaves Joan Didion head and shoulders above her contemporaries. I’m on the lookout for more.