Play it as it Lays

There’s an old joke that goes, “How do you say ‘I love you’ in New York? Fuck you. How do you say ‘fuck you’ in California? I love you.” That’s the cultural climate in which Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays takes place. But while that cultural climate is important for the story, it isn’t the main point the author addresses.

Maria is one problem of a woman. She addresses the reader directly in the first person during the opening monologue. From that we learn about the novel’s two elemental metaphors: gambling and rattlesnakes. Maria approaches life as a game of chance. The gambler at the roulette wheel acts without agency over the ball; it just lands where it lands and the player has to accept the result whatever show more that may be. The gambler “plays it as it lays”. The other, more subtle metaphor is that life will bite you whether you like it or not. Rattlesnakes are hiding, biting anyone who is unlucky enough to cross their paths. But rattlesnakes don’t ordinarily attack people. They only bite when provoked so the best way to avoid getting bitten is to play it as it lays. Just avoid getting involved. Knowing this puts Maria into a permanent state of anxiety. After getting bit once, she is expecting another bite to come at some random time. One other detail we learn from Mariah’s opening monologue is that she doesn’t care at all about motivations or explanations. What happens happens and the reason behind it doesn’t matter. Everything is on the surface. Joan Didion, as a master of irony, uses Mariah’s monologue to explain what motivates the protagonist to approach life without the understanding of her own motivations.

Maria’s opening monologue is followed by two other monologues. One is that of her closest friend Helene. The other is that of her husband Carter. From these two we learn that neither of them understand Maria, but they both perceive her as mentally unstable. And although they are the two closest people in her life, both of them are emotionally distant and more like caretakers who put up with her out of a sense of duty more than from genuine interest. There are also subtle foreshadowings of the affair between Helene and Carter, as well as the death of Helene’s husband BZ, all of which culminate at the end of the story.

As a writing technique, the three separate introductory monologues function effectively in presenting three separate perspectives on Maria. This may sound too obvious to be worth mentioning, but what is unique about it is the way the novel shifts back to Maria in the first person throughout the rest of the book. Keeping this in mind, the reader follows Maria’s subjectivity through the lens of two other characters who see her from inaccurate perspectives she can not see herself. Considering that Didion’s style in this novel is called minimalist by some, the perception of depth and multi-dimensionalism in the narrative are heightened. This minimalist irony is taken a step further in that the people surrounding Maria in her life aren’t much more introspective than she is. They aren’t deep thinking. They aren’t analytical people. They just do what they do and when Maria doesn’t make sense to them, they leave her to herself and do soemthing else.

So who are these people? Carter is a film maker. Maria is his wife. They live in Los Angeles. Maria has starred in two movies, but mostly she doesn’t do much. In a haze of tranquilizers and alcohol, she lays by the pool or drives endlessly on the LA freeways in her corvette while listening to the radio. The main source of meaning in her otherwise pointless life is her daughter who lives in a home for mentally disabled children.

One movie Maria starred in was a short experimental film made by Carter. The whole film is close up shots of Maria going about her daily life. She is the only element of the film. The other movie she starred in was made by BZ, Helene’s husband who is also a film maker who sometimes delves into directing pornography. The latter movie stars Maria as the woman in a biker gangbang. BZ describes it as a movie where the female subject is nothing more than a prop since the gangbang is all about the bikers using her body to fulfill their homosexual desires for each other.

Both films are pivotal in understanding Maria because they negate her as a human being in two fundamentally opposing ways. Carter’s film is entirely about her surface, showing only how she appears and what she does with no examination of her subjective life. In the other film, her humanity is negated because, as BZ describes it, she disappears in a screen full of cocks. Inexplicably, Maria claims that BZ’s biker movie is her favorite because it is the one in which her character has the most agency. It is an ironic statement coming from a woman who convinces herself she is refusing to exercise agency in her own life. I say “convincing herself” because she actually does display agency all throughout the book.

Maria does exercise agency when she goes to visit her daughter unannounced at the home for disabled children. The caretaker at the home, however, berates her for not making an appointment because a spontaneous visit like that disrupts her routine and can upset the girl’s stability. Maria also chooses to take her daughter to a Christmas celebration at her ffriends’ mansion, but this results in disaster when her daughter becomes violent.

Maria also exercises agency when she takes trips to Las Vegas to escape from the miseries of life in Los Angeles. On one trip, she randomly encounters her godfather in a casino. The man gives her his phone number and post office box address so she can contact him later. On another trip back to Las Vegas, she tries calling him only to find out the number is invalid. She tries to contact him again by waiting at the post office for several days in hopes he will show up to retrieve his mail from his PO box. But after waiting, Maria learns that the box is rented, not by her godfather, but by an insane woman who doesn’t know him.

Another significant example of Maria exercising agency is when she gets pregnant while cheating on her husband. Carter gives her a choice between having an abortion or divorce. He qualifies the latter option by telling her that he will get custody over their daughter if she chooses to break up with him. Although Carter’s intention is manipulative, he does offer a choice. Since Maria’s daughter is the only thing she cares about in her life, she chooses the abortion. That procedure, illegal at the time of publication, proved to be psychologically traumatic for Maria. Here we see how a pattern in her life emerges: every time Maria tries to exert control over her circumstances, something rotten happens as a result. Every time the rattlesnake bites.

That is a pattern that explains why Maria is the way she is. She runs away from choices and responsibilities because every choice she makes damages her. She numbs the pain with drugs and alcohol in an attempt to erase her mind and emotions. She becomes anhedonic, unable to feel pain or pleasure, living the life of a lobotomy victim or a zombie. For her this is a defense mechanism against the entanglements of the world; for the others in her life, it is a sign of mental illness in a woman having a nervous breakdown. Probably both perspectives are accurate.

And yet another side of Maria is revealed when she visits the supermarket. In the store, she recognizes a crowd of other Southern Californian women whose lives are just as empty and pointless as hers. She recognizes them because they all pirchase the same grocery items. Therefore she consciously chooses to buy groceries that differ from them in an attempt to differentiate herself. It is a form of camouflage. She wants to conceal her similarities to the other lonely shoppers, but there is also a touch of pride in her cover as though she wants to individuate herself in some way. Since the other people in the store can’t see her motivations, if they even notice her at all, this can be little more than a private pleasure. No matter how trivial it is, it is still an attempt at clinging on to some sense of self-worth. Maria also takes a small turn in her rejections of casual sex in Las Vegas towards the end of the novel.

But any subtle changes in Maria are destined to go unnoticed by Helene, Carter, BZ or anybody else around her because they are inattentive to her feelings to begin with. Her husband and friends go out to a remote location in the desert of Nevada and drag her along with them because Carter worries she is losing her grip on reality. Once there, they leave her in the hotel room during the days when they are on a movie set filming a western. Maria mostly stays in a drugged stupor while staying in bed. She finds common ground with BZ who comes to her in despair because Helen and Carter are having an affair and not trying to hide it. Both BZ and Helene have hit rock bottom and BZ tries to convince Maria to overdose on pills with him. He dies in bed beside her but she lives because she refused to kill herself. Suicide would entail taking control over her situation so she does nothing. Ironically, playing it as it lays is what saves her in the end.

On one level, this novel is about the shallow lives of rich people in Hollywood working in the film industry. Maria is surrounded by friends and family acting out of self-interest and brute instinct without any awareness of what is going on with the people around them. Maria’s relationship to them is toxic and dysfunctional. It is through their ignorance that they negate her humanity, treating her like little more than an appendage. And yet they say they love her. Joan Didion’s opinion of the upper crust in California is made clear. On another level, this novel is a character study of a woman who doesn’t have much character whilE in the middle of an existential crisis. But Maria isn’t really on a downward spiral because she was at the bottom to begin with. That’s a shocking statement about somebody with wealth, privilege, and an endless amount of leisure time. She also tries to negate her own humanity by refusing to take control by avoiding choices and letting life happen to her. Despite that, her humanity keeps emerging. Her attempts at self-negation are deliberate, but what I think Joan Didion is demonstrating is that there is something about humanity that can’t be submerged, negated, or denied out of existence no matter how hard people may try. Maria attempts to delude herself into thinking she has no self-awareness or capacity to choose, and yet she keeps making choices in matters that reveal she does have some kind of self-knowledge, albeit self-knowledge that is partially hidden from her conscious mind.

Play It As It Lays could be a 1970s American echo of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, the novel I would argue is the most sadly misinterpreted book of the 20th century. Maria is a lot like Mersault in that she lives the life of a nihilist. It is a life that lacks quality because, like Mersault, she avoids taking control and minimizes her willingness to make choices. Both characters live a pointless, empty existence. But just as so many readers misinterpret Mersault as being some kind of hero, I fear a lot of readers will misinterpret Maria as being a woman who is hopelessly lost in the world. It all depends on how conscientious you are in paying attention to subtle details. If you pay close enough attention, you will notice the abundance of times Joan Didion mentions rattlesnakes in this story. If you read quickly and don’t pay attention, you won’t. If you read carefully enough to be aware of all the rattlesnakes, you should be able to see all the subtle signs that Maria has more agency than you realize. In that there is humanity and in that there is hope. If you only see Maria through the eyes of Helene and Carter then you haven’t understood Joan Didion’s message. The less like them you are, the better off you will be in life anyhow. show less

Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays is a quick read but it burdens like an anvil with its infectious existential despair after. Maria, an actress, finds herself swimming in worn out Hollywood memories whilst lying in a hospital bed, what's left of its magnetising spark and glamour, and hedonism which are only a temporary reprieve from its monstrosity: the transient fame, the disillusioned promises of films and acting, a rocky and adulterous marriage, a sick daughter, the fake friends, and the ultimate expiration date brought by age and trend. Maria's life is dramatic and tragic like the movies. With the lack of creative control and voice both at home and work they snake their way to Maria's life. She eventually lacks control in any part of show more it. She is looking for purpose, for meaning, anything to make life worth clinging to yet it's devoid of anything. What she has is a series of sexual and superficial encounters as she tethers herself into anything and anyone that alleviates any part of her that aches. Soon, we learn more, the how's, the cries, the tries but not really the why's.

Play It As It Lays is a sad charade of living. Its people have the luxury for everything yet they have nothing. They take anything as a panacea to plaster the malady of emptiness and longing underneath a critical yet debauch society. Along the lights and sounds of Las Vegas hides a bellow for help whilst the thirst of wanting floods the dry Mojave Desert.

Didion writes with high precision and lucidity; its relevance scarily familiar in the present still. The struggles of being a woman, a mother, and an actress embrace its rough pages. She performs an accurate autopsy of our society dead enough not to care about its nauseating norms and impossible expectations. It is an utterly devastating story of surviving day by day with eyes closed whilst hoping for a better tomorrow. Please prepare yourself for the anvil. show less

A fantastic novel depicting the horror associated with a life of substance and history subjected to a society which values superficiality and hypocrisy. Maria Wyeth is a young model/actress in LA, married, for a time anyway, to a marginally successful director. The first few chapters of the novel provide us with insight into individual characters views of Maria's ultimate state, then the novel moves into the complete story according to Maria's point of view.
One should not confuse Didion's journalistic, masculine writing style with an anti-feminist point of view. Maria may be an empty vessel, but it is far more the fault of her surroundings than her own tendencies. Rather it is Didion's sensitivity to Maria's internal "life" which makes show more her most enchanting a female writer. She compresses metaphysical revelations into seemingly palatable statements, and the reader is advised not to be fooled by short chapters, but to ruminate for a while over every composition. Life itself is what continues us, presents the reason for us to continue to exist, despite our best intentions.. show less

A glimpse into the life and mindset of protagonist Maria Wyeth, a minor Hollywood actress in the 1960s, Divorced, forced through an abortion, drifting through a life of drugs, pills, affairs, parties, emptiness.
Never have I seen major depression – as emptiness and utter indifference, as being cut off and detatched from your feelings – portrayed more truly, accurately and urgently as here.
Love the backdrop of 1960s Hollywood, the stark desert, Nevada, sex, drugs and artist life.
Bleak like the hot desert sand, this is a novel to be felt, to have ingrained into your mind.
Written in a clean-cut, clipped language that is nevertheless sparkling and haunting. A lean, cool force of a story. Joan Didion wrote an unforgettable modern show more American classic. show less

Didion is so successfully unsentimental. A sharp observer of humans and culture, precise and terrifying in her insight. Play it as it Lays is a book in the mind of a depressed, listless woman aimlessly floating in what Didion observes as the Californian decadence of the 60s, though the book never gives any such clear cut terms as clues. It's a bored but functioning nihilistic crowd that thinks it's seen everything and has money and nothing else to do. It's striking how she captures what it's like to live without meaning, maybe due to too much freedom of choice. It also feels like a lot of her personal fears jump out of the pages. A very dark, pessimistic mind without hope, so perfectly captured. But which still often feels the show more melancholia of being barely alive. "I know what nothing means, and I keep on playing." The tiny 1.5 to 2 page chapters' format makes it irresistible and hard to put down. show less

Didion’s lean and supple prose is excellent. The dialogue is hard and elliptical, sketching the characters in small strokes. Is that enough to make it a great book? The central figure, Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-a) is elusive, not only for the characters with whom she interacts but also for this reader. About one-third in, I wasn’t sure I would finish the book since I didn’t know if I cared what happened to her.
The formal structure of the novel—84 chapters in just 213 pages—indicates how fragmentary the tale, which is appropriate to the plot, since it recounts the disintegration of a personality. Maria's anomie is her own, but also a metaphor for Hollywood in the late Sixties, where this former model, sometime actress, and show more ex-wife of a struggling director, lives. In the end, the book comes to a resolution of sorts; I'm glad I stuck with it, it's a good read. show less

Although author Joan Didion is well known for her non-fiction writing, Play it As It Lays is one of her fictional stories. It is about a former actress and model, Maria Wyeth and her descent into madness. Set against a backdrop of Hollywood in the 1960s, the author doesn’t hesitate to show the emptiness and isolation that being a lesser known celebrity can bring to a person.

The story unfolds in short chapters that paint Maria’s life in vivid strokes. It is told in alternating points of view and perspectives, from Maria’s accounts to her friend Helene, and her ex-husband and director Carter Lang. We find that Maria and Carter have a young daughter who has been placed in a care facility for the mentally disabled. Maria at thirty-one show more is a faded actress, soon to be divorced, missing her daughter who she frequently visits and constantly asserts her determination “to get her out”, she is an emotionally empty person whose self-destructive behaviour includes casual sex, drugs and, in a desperate effort to escape, she endlessly drives the freeways in and around Los Angeles but always ends up back where she started. Her relationships are toxic and she really has no one that she trusts or even seems to care much about.

A rather depressing read for this time of year, yet the writing is exceptional and you find yourself drawn into Maria’s life even though you can see perfectly well that this is going to end in disaster. The author uses each word to it’s best ability, there are no wasted or extra phrases to distract the reader from the stark reality of a life going off the tracks. Play It As It Lays is the first Didion that I have read, and I am certainly encouraged to track down more of her work in the future. show less