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63rd out of 100 books
—
314 voters
Play It as It Lays
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid
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Paperback, 240 pages
Published
November 15th 2005
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published 1970)
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Mar 12, 2009
Jessica
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
film industry wives? or people obsessed with LA
I remember when I read Where I Was From a couple years ago, Didion referred a lot to her novel Play It As It Lays and I thought it sounded really bad. About a year ago I found an old edition someplace with this enormous and brain-numbingly awesome picture of Didion with her cigarette and legendarily icy, ironical stare. I really came close to buying it just because of that image on the back, but then I had a real stern confrontation with myself in the used fiction aisle about the folly and immat...more
Recently my five y/o daughter caught the first minute of the "Thriller" video. I say the first minute because upon seeing Michael look up at the camera with yellow eyes and fangs she threw her hands up, screamed at the top of her lungs, ran from the room, into her room, ran back into the room (still screaming), out of the room, back in and buried her head into the safety of my comforting lap (still screaming).
Now I realize this is most people's reaction to seeing Micheal's post '90s decomposing...more
Now I realize this is most people's reaction to seeing Micheal's post '90s decomposing...more
22 likes
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This book is simply brilliant. The fatalism of it's heroine, Maria Wyeth, is absolutely heart-wrenching as she slowly grows more and more tired of life. Didion is a surgeon, each sentence like a scalpel cutting away a cancerous tumor. No one can match her for brutal honesty. While it's a very quick read at just over 200 pages, it deals a swift but heavy blow.
When I finished reading this book the other day, I suddenly realized that I hadn't really appreciated it correctly. That I needed to reread it right away because I hadn't read it the right way and because there is a lot that you don't have enough information to make sense of the first time around.
I don't understand how people can call this book cold and sterile. I just thought it was so rich and textured and heartbreaking. I feel like the little chapters are like puzzle pieces and each piece is...more
I don't understand how people can call this book cold and sterile. I just thought it was so rich and textured and heartbreaking. I feel like the little chapters are like puzzle pieces and each piece is...more
13 likes
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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...more
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...more
3 likes
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The first of her fiction that I’ve read, and it has the bleakly stylish pleasures I might have predicted from prior exposure to the essays – her feel for ominous banality, for the casual nihilism of the rootless (she insinuates where Isherwood rants, and beats him on the Zen of Freeways), for the grotesque contrast of a character’s obvious ongoing crack-up and the evasive, anesthetized trivialities she speaks in. Published in 1970 but feels radically spare and minimal – but I don’t know why I sa...more
15 likes
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I would still describe it as "The Bell Jar" meets "Valley of the Dolls". However, that one-liner doesnt at all fairly represent the excellent writing by Joan Didion, which made me think of Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. There is also a touch of the 60's beatnik going on. You really get a feel for the era. I actually read it twice, first kind of zipping along, trying to get the general feeling, and then a second time, very carefully. The imagery Didion uses is so powerful and if you pay attention to...more
5 likes
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A novel in snippets, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays begins with three passages narrated in the first person by three of the main characters—the focus of these people’s observations is Maria, the first of the three, and the main character of the novel. The rest of the book is comprised of 84 pieces of prose narrated in the third person from Maria’s point of view. What emerges from these episodic glimpses into the hazy world of a would-be starlet, wife, and mother is a portrait of dissolution, d...more
Kind of fascinating to see that concise, tip-of-the-iceberg prose of Didion's essays applied to a piece of fiction. The heroine, who seems to share the author's withering intelligence, can't enjoy the decadence that her friends have resigned themselves to, but she isn't much good with the wholesome life either, so she carves out a mostly solitary existence made up of sleeping next to her swimming pool, compulsively hitting the highway (she puts less thought into zipping over to Vegas [distance:...more
3 likes
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I very much enjoy her blunt, frank, clear tone. She reminds me of Marguerite Duras' style. By which remark I include The Lover but am leaning more toward her other works.
Original post at Book Rhapsody.
***
What Does Nothing Mean?
Play It As It Lays is the second novel of Joan Didion that shows us Maria’s spiral descent into self-destruction. The anti-heroine, a forgettable actress and the wife of a director, is a decadent locked up in a mental institution while pining for her sick young daughter and tracing, retracing her way to self-discovery. She does so with episodic narrations of her memories of socialite parties, casual drugs, bad sex, intimate suicides, illeg...more
***
What Does Nothing Mean?
Play It As It Lays is the second novel of Joan Didion that shows us Maria’s spiral descent into self-destruction. The anti-heroine, a forgettable actress and the wife of a director, is a decadent locked up in a mental institution while pining for her sick young daughter and tracing, retracing her way to self-discovery. She does so with episodic narrations of her memories of socialite parties, casual drugs, bad sex, intimate suicides, illeg...more
i think i would actually give this 3.5 stars. it's close to 4... but...
never having read any of didion's fiction i was immensely curious as to what i would find. her stylistic approach to fiction is very similar to the non-fiction i've read of hers. sentences and thoughts come at you in short, precise, loaded, and planned prose. words are not minced. i got a clear sense that every adjective and every word carried weight.
this is not a happy book. and i couldn't really sympathize with any of the...more
never having read any of didion's fiction i was immensely curious as to what i would find. her stylistic approach to fiction is very similar to the non-fiction i've read of hers. sentences and thoughts come at you in short, precise, loaded, and planned prose. words are not minced. i got a clear sense that every adjective and every word carried weight.
this is not a happy book. and i couldn't really sympathize with any of the...more
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 h...more
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 h...more
This story is of Maria. She's in a mental institution or neuropsychaitric center as they were called in the '60's. Her daughter is also commited and is being treated for a chemical imabalance. I think the daughter's around the age of 4. Maria's seen some bad stuff in her day, but the straw that broke the camel's back...well, I won't spoil it. But, there was something that she was blamed for...something that she allowed to happen. And that's why she's holed up undergoing psychotherapy. She tries...more
2 likes
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I picked this book up from the library because of a tag line comparing Didion to Nathanael West. I think the similarity comes from both of their depictions of Hollywood in unfavorable light, however I think West focuses more on the absurdity and dark humor, while Didion's novel tends to point out the emptiness and depravity.
This is the Hollywood of the early 1970s. Driving around freeways, cocktail parties, drugs, sham marriages, one night stands with nobody actors. Maria is a very unhappy woman...more
This is the Hollywood of the early 1970s. Driving around freeways, cocktail parties, drugs, sham marriages, one night stands with nobody actors. Maria is a very unhappy woman...more
May 23, 2007
Christine
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Multiple personalities
Shelves:
novels
Joan Didion is an Author-I-Am-Currently-Obsessed-With. But this novel is only OK. It is very depressing - the tale of a fictional minor actress in the Seventies's crawl through divorce, abortion, grief and adultery with the obligatory final destination: institutionalization. I've read a LOT of this type of stuff and frankly it's been done to death - no pun intended.
What's interesting is knowing that Didion herself was hospitalized at some point, and wondering how much is autobiographical. Democr...more
What's interesting is knowing that Didion herself was hospitalized at some point, and wondering how much is autobiographical. Democr...more
Lifes tough when you're a pill popping actress trying to cope with an abortion. Quick and entertaining enough to pass time on subway rides. I had trouble relating or empathizing with the characters in the book, though i had a hunch i'm not supposed to. Maybe its LA that i dont like? It had a Hurly Burly type feel to it, except its not funny. This book probably would have been more effective if i read it when i was 15, when wallowing in depression seemed glamourous. Honestly i had a hard time abs...more
Oof. The Sheltering Sky meets The Great Gatsby as rewritten by Raymond Carver? Only... even more depressing and bleak than that sounds? Hence the "oof," you know.
Normally I just want books about poor, poor rich people to spare me, but this one worked by never losing sight of the fact that these hedonists were constantly digging their own holes.
Normally I just want books about poor, poor rich people to spare me, but this one worked by never losing sight of the fact that these hedonists were constantly digging their own holes.
Aug 22, 2007
Phillip
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
50-favorite-books
I think this was the first book by Joan Didion that I read. It's a really taught, arid novel, with very little room to breathe. Since I grew up in Los Angeles, I could really relate to how brilliantly she integrated place in the novel (the story takes place in Los Angeles). She's a great writer, this isn't a bad place to start if you're thinking about checking her out. If you're a non-fiction reader, Salvador is a brilliant meditation on the Reagan-era U.S. (CIA-sponsored) activities in that cou...more
wow. i wasn't sure what i was expecting from this novel, but it wasn't this. i loved it. though i've heard this book described as an "LA book" or a "vegas book", those descriptions do the book no justice at all-- in fact they do it a disservice. because it's really a book about... the human condition? the human soul? isolation? loneliness? fear? desperation? greed? throughout the entire book there is a pervasive feeling of wanting to get out of a situation and trying to escape, but ultimately no...more
Play it As It Lays by Joan Didion
For the first part of the book I did not much take part or feel the rhythm. It is the second time, in about six months, that this happens to me: I start a book, from one of the lists of “best ever”, I do not connect, but go along for the ride, absentmindedly, kind of thinking about my own thing, while the events of the book happen in a sort of background, like a soft music I play while reading, only this time the reading is the music…
At about 29% of the book- I k...more
For the first part of the book I did not much take part or feel the rhythm. It is the second time, in about six months, that this happens to me: I start a book, from one of the lists of “best ever”, I do not connect, but go along for the ride, absentmindedly, kind of thinking about my own thing, while the events of the book happen in a sort of background, like a soft music I play while reading, only this time the reading is the music…
At about 29% of the book- I k...more
Ok, let me try to say this without triggering so much eye rolling in your head that you break your skull: I enjoy books about first world ennui. But not first world ennui in the sense of the Bravo TV Network filming bored housewives trying to find reasons to scream at each other and pull their weaves off. First world ennui in the sense that humans see themselves as having a higher purpose (because aren't we all told, repeatedly, that we have a higher purpose?) and then struggling between points...more
Want to read some beautiful prose? Didion writes like Miles Davis played. That spare West Coast sound with no vibrato. Just the pure, existential, weight of the moment, soul-searing feel.
Maria (ma-RYE-ah) Wyeth -- one of the most tortured characters you'll ever read about -- has an internal clock that ticks to the beat of the freeways in LA, which she purposely drives for relaxation, navigating like a sailor.
Listen to this: She tried to remember how it had been to drag Fremont Street in Vegas w...more
Maria (ma-RYE-ah) Wyeth -- one of the most tortured characters you'll ever read about -- has an internal clock that ticks to the beat of the freeways in LA, which she purposely drives for relaxation, navigating like a sailor.
Listen to this: She tried to remember how it had been to drag Fremont Street in Vegas w...more
Joan Didion, as always, is a master. Play it as it Lays follows the breakdown (or perhaps, the aftermath of a breakdown ... and, in someways, the prelude to a breakdown) of Maria (that's Ma-rye-ah, mind you), a woman whose listless ennui seems to encapsulate the entirety of the 1960's. Set in Hollywood and in the endless deserts of the edges of the American frontier, the narrative most concretely deals with the aftermath of an abortion and the splintering of Maria's marriage. But truly, the nove...more
I first read this book when I was younger and then I started to re-read it. The second reading brought new understanding but both times I found the book very powerful.
Joan Didion creates characters with whom the reader develops strange relationships. Even if there are many details given about a character or even when the reader experiences conversations or thoughts of the character there is always a certain amount of disconnect as if the reader is still an observer. In this way, both the reader...more
Joan Didion creates characters with whom the reader develops strange relationships. Even if there are many details given about a character or even when the reader experiences conversations or thoughts of the character there is always a certain amount of disconnect as if the reader is still an observer. In this way, both the reader...more
i just re-read this book and it still bowls me over every time. I've been wanting to revisit it since the premiere of the AMC show "Mad Men", as there are many times in that show that I felt this book must have been an influence on the writers, as it tackles about the same time period with that same critical eye. What's so amazing to me is that Ms. Didion did it so soon after the 60's ended, yet was still able to create a character like Maria, an anti-heroine to rival Don Draper, whose selfishne...more
"You told me you'd come," Carter said.
"What for."
"I want you out there."
"It's all gone, you said so yourself."
"All right," said Carter. "Stay here and kill yourself. Something interesting like that."
Carter and BZ and Helene left for the desert. Maria found a doctor who would give her barbituates again, and in the evenings she drove.
Und so weiter for 214 pages.
Apropos description from the book jacket: "a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s . . . the emptiness and ennui of cont...more
"What for."
"I want you out there."
"It's all gone, you said so yourself."
"All right," said Carter. "Stay here and kill yourself. Something interesting like that."
Carter and BZ and Helene left for the desert. Maria found a doctor who would give her barbituates again, and in the evenings she drove.
Und so weiter for 214 pages.
Apropos description from the book jacket: "a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s . . . the emptiness and ennui of cont...more
Joan Didion began Play It As It Lays with the precept of writing " a novel so elliptical and fast that it would be over before you noticed it, a novel so fast that it would scarcely exist on the page at all....white space. Empty space...." Hers is a masterfully crafted deadpan style that is calm and unnerving at once;it is prose style that achieves the effect of a particular kind of anxiety that causes the skin to tighten and the back of the neck to break into a clammy sweath even though there i...more
Freshman year, Stanford, 1972. For those who did not clock a 4 on the AP English exam, you had to suffer through two quarters of literature. Fortunately, the offerings were broad enough to allow a student to sample what they liked. Unless you were lazy and took your sweet time signing up. By the time yours truly dragged his ass to registration, only a few classes remained so I grabbed and contemporary American fiction and writing class taught by a young graduate student. She cohabited with a lit...more
Didion's writing is wonderfully spare and evocative, the structure is taut and engaging, and the settings, from the Nevada desert to suburban Los Angeles, imbued with meaning and rendered in such beautiful language as to make them living, breathing characters. However, the humans in the story are not nearly so interesting. Apart from a few suggestive monologues at the beginning that give some promise that there is something worth caring about in this story, we follow around a self-absorbed actre...more
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| Hysterical Realists: Joan Didion Group Read? | 1 | 17 | Apr 13, 2012 07:24am |
Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She's best known for her novels and her literary journalism.
Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.
More about Joan Didion...
Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.
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“What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.”
—
26 people liked it
“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.”
—
21 people liked it
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updated Mar 13, 2009 08:57am
Mar 15, 2009 05:23pm