Play It as It Lays

this book is lovely. if you enjoyed my year of rest and relaxation this is for you. emotionally disturbed woman orphaned in their 20s moving through life where it takes them, sometimes on substances

Joan Didion is the best contemporary writer I know. Good books are meant to be reread to reveal something new about the reader. I have reread this book at least 6 or 7 times and each time I "see" something different and insightful about Maria and her sad and tragic life. I'm still trying to figure out what is the attraction to this short novel. It must be the writing style that sucks you into the unfolding of a story of what could have been many women's life both now and then. I wonder too, as someone who was born after the book was writen, how representative it was of the decadence and wildness of the 60's. This book gives new meaning to T.S. Eliot's poem, "Hollow Men", although I think Maria expressed (or tried to in her own strange ways) the inner depths of herself throughout the book. I think there's something universal in that experience of being a thoughtful woman who seeks something real in life, but is really valued for her beauty and fleeting youth (which are all ephemeral). You can see that theme as well in "Valley of the Dolls", another recommended read.

"Play It As It Lays" takes us to the rarified world of Hollywood and La-la Land, where life is fast, flat, and apparently as empty as the souls of some of its inhabitants. At the center of the book is Maria Wyeth, who at 31 is on the far side of the big 3-0 dividing line; orphaned when her parents are killed in a car crash, divorced from her film-director husband, the mother of a handicapped, institutionalized child, a sometime model and actress, who has become desensitized and remote from the pain of others to hide her own interior pain. Maria has truly been "out there where nothing is" but instead of rejecting it, she has come to feel at home in it. The final nail in the coffin of her ability to feel is the abortion her estranged husband forces her to have to get rid of the child of her married lover; if she refuses, he will take custody of their own daughter. From that point, her life spirals downward into a haze of drugs, booze and casual, meaningless sex; communication with others is reduced to an interchange of one-liners; we wonder if this woman can feel anything for anyone any more. When Maria is able to calmly watch the husband of her supposed best friend destroy himself without lifting a finger to try to help him, we wonder is it because she is too lazy to call for help, or too detached to care. Joan Didion's prose is as spare and as stark as the inner life of the character she writes about, and in simple but telling phrases she is able to convey to the reader all the pain and emptiness, and finally the viciousness, that passes for Maria's life. Maria will wallow in her own anomie and to hell with anyone who gets burned by contact with her. Is this payback? Maybe. Joan Didion lets us see Maria and her life in all its revolting nothingness, and makes us want to thank God it isn't ours. Judy Lind

"Play It As It Lays" takes us to the rarified world of Hollywood and La-la Land, where life is fast, flat, and apparently as empty as the souls of some of its inhabitants. At the center of the book is Maria Wyeth, who at 31 is on the far side of the big 3-0 dividing line; orphaned when her parents are killed in a car crash, divorced from her film-director husband, the mother of a handicapped, institutionalized child, a sometime model and actress, who has become desensitized and remote from the pain of others to hide her own interior pain. Maria has truly been "out there where nothing is" but instead of rejecting it, she has come to feel at home in it. The final nail in the coffin of her ability to feel is the abortion her estranged husband forces her to have to get rid of the child of her married lover; if she refuses, he will take custody of their own daughter. From that point, her life spirals downward into a haze of drugs, booze and casual, meaningless sex; communication with others is reduced to an interchange of one-liners; we wonder if this woman can feel anything for anyone any more. When Maria is able to calmly watch the husband of her supposed best friend destroy himself without lifting a finger to try to help him, we wonder is it because she is too lazy to call for help, or too detached to care. Joan Didion's prose is as spare and as stark as the inner life of the character she writes about, and in simple but telling phrases she is able to convey to the reader all the pain and emptiness, and finally the viciousness, that passes for Maria's life. Maria will wallow in her own anomie and to hell with anyone who gets burned by contact with her. Is this payback? Maybe. Joan Didion lets us see Maria and her life in all its revolting nothingness, and makes us want to thank God it isn't ours.

I was in my last year of high school when I read this book and it remains one of my most treasured books. Didion's precise images in Play It As It Lays compelled me to run out and read each essay and book I could get my hands on. Sometimes I pick it up and read the book from cover to cover, other times just my favorite parts. This book tells a story that - while distressing - you absolutely must devour!