Reading the 20th Century discussion
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Play It As It Lays
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Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (February 2022)
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Perhaps a buddy read of one or the other would be an interesting non-fiction comparison? I would certainly like to read more by her.
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Slouching Towards Bethlemen was published 1968. Blurb:
Joan Didion’s savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution.
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were
In her non-fiction work, Joan Didion not only describes the subject at hand – her younger self loving and leaving New York, the murderous housewife, the little girl trailing the rock group, the millionaire bunkered in his mansion – but also offers a broader vision of the world, one that is both terrifying and tender, ominous and uniquely her own.
White Album published 1979. Blurb:
In this landmark essay collection, Joan Didion brilliantly interweaves her own “bad dreams” with those of a nation confronting the dark underside of 1960s counterculture.
From a jailhouse visit to Black Panther Party cofounder Huey Newton to witnessing First Lady of California Nancy Reagan pretend to pick flowers for the benefit of news cameras, Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with her signature blend of irony and insight. She takes readers to the “giddily splendid” Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the cool mountains of Bogotá, and the Jordanian Desert, where Bishop James Pike went to walk in Jesus’s footsteps—and died not far from his rented Ford Cortina. She anatomizes the culture of shopping malls—“toy garden cities in which no one lives but everyone consumes”—and exposes the contradictions and compromises of the women’s movement. In the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders—a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one.
Written in “a voice like no other in contemporary journalism,” The White Album is a masterpiece of literary reportage and a fearless work of autobiography by the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times Book Review). Its power to electrify and inform remains undiminished nearly forty years after it was first published.
I like the look of both.
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So I have both, happy to go with either.
I would lean toward Slouching Towards Bethlehem but I will be up for either.
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Happy then to read either of the Didion. I have finished Play As It Lays now and was very impressed. A definite five stars from me.
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We could slip it into either April or May - any preferences? I'll post on the buddy reads thread to see who else might want to join.
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My review of Play It As It Lays hot off the press...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4/5
Good review Nigel, but why do you find it cynical? I rather would say sad
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Sad too - very sad
I thought most of the characters were selfish, world weary, calculating, and lacking integrity. Poor old Maria was chewed up and spat out. No one seemed to like her for who she was and most were concerned with how they could exploit her.
Very true.I'm not sure what Maria was, exactly. A lost soul certainly.
One thing I wondered was how far Didion's portrait of Hollywood was from the common perception. I'm sure it was never regarded as the height of warm community or ethical practice. And yet something about the writing and the image of Hollywood felt very new to me, even 50 years later.
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I was going to say I still think it is best to read in order so I would read Slouching first and then White.
Although my take on Didion is far more positive than hers, there is an excellent article by Daphne Merkin on Didion in today's NYT, including a paragraph on Play it as it Lays.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/bo...
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This bit feels very pertinent to this discussion...
Perhaps her greatest gift is her ability to transpose what is essentially a solipsistic outlook, specializing in malaise, into a form of bleak collective truth. She does so in that strangely attenuated lapidary tone of hers, a tone of High Weariness, which many of her characters share — most famously in her second novel, “Play It as It Lays.”
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Who else is reading this?
I'm not yet reading it, but I will because I'd like to give her fiction a try. The only Didion I've attempted was The Year Of Magical Thinking which so many people revere. I'm afraid it just irritated me to the point where I gave up, but I'll certainly be interested in seeing what her other work is like.
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I think I'm going to love this.
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While I was reading it, I was thinking about Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar written about ten years before, and by the time I finished, I was also comparing it to The Great Gatsby with all the emotional and ethical hollowness beneath a glittering surface. Fitzgerald's last novel was also set against Hollywood.
I felt it was a very gendered narrative so it was surprising (view spoiler)
I was also surprised and uncomfortable with the regular use of 'faggots' as a term.
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"*Loved* this! It's way beyond bleak, though, and well into nihilist territory, I thought."
Isn't it though?
"...by the time I finished, I was also comparing it to The Great Gatsby with all the emotional and ethical hollowness beneath a glittering surface."
Interesting. I hadn't made that connection but now you mention it....
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I have to say, in some ways, I was reminded of The Weather in the Streets with the sense of the female characters lack of control over her own body...
One of the things that struck me was how little agency any of the women in the novel had, other than to dose themselves on pills or alcohol or retreat into mental illness.I wondered what other aspects of American culture Didion was writing "with" or "against" at the time of publication.
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And in the light of the Weinstein revelations little changed in the intervening years
Ben wrote: "I wondered what other aspects of American culture Didion was writing "with" or "against" at the time of publication"
Didion simply holding a mirror up here?
Like you Ben, I would be interested in her personal position on Hollywood of that era - and other political issues
The liberal use of the F-word (admittedly v commonplace at the time it was written) suggests some possible ambiguity? Then again it's so hard to judge anything written 50 + years ago by the norms of the present day.
My understanding was that Didion was at this time still a critic of the "counterculture", which is somewhat consistent with her negative view of the Hollywood scene she portrays. (But what was there to be positive about?). Later on (at least beginning in the 1980's) she found a lot about mainstream America to critique.As 1969 somewhat predates my reading of contemporary American literature, I'm curious what writings she was in dialogue with. Ken Kesey? Tom Wolfe? John Updike? Or more "popular" writers?
I suspect reading Slouching Toward Bethlehem will answer some of my questions.
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Sadly, that didn't surprise me one bit :(
But it was surprising that it's BZ who kills himself. I thought that it was Maria's hope of being with her daughter again that kept her going so that motherhood becomes a kind of lifeline.
I'm even more keen now to read the journalism and essays to learn more about Didion.
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Don't forget Fitzgerald's portrait of Hollywood in Tender is the Night. Not just in terms of Rosemary and the other actors but also that scene where they build a film set to depict Rome... despite being in Rome for real!
This was indeed a bleak story, but quite intriguing. What we don’t see is as interesting as what we do see. It reminded me of the short stories of Lucia Berlin. I liked Didion’s style, very sharp and incisive, but I’m not sure I’d read any more by her.
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"I’m not sure I’d read any more by her"
I probably would - but not with any great sense of urgency
What about everyone else?
I'm looking forward to both Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album. I'm less sure about her other fictional works, but I'm open to influence.
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I'm late again! I enjoyed this book very much, but I had to put it down for over a week because she cut a bit too close to the bone in Chapter 59, when Maria was musing over whether something had even happened at all if you are the only one who remembers it. My Mom died in 2019 and my life partner died in 2020, and I'd been thinking a lot about things like that. It was a bit of a shock to have it pop up in the book! I'm very much looking forward to reading more Didion.
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Joan Didion’s Magic Trick
What was it that gave her such power?
By Caitlin Flanagan
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
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"I've decided to press straight on with Play It as It Lays (1970) and I'm loving it. A deeply cynical take on the emptiness of early 70s Los Angeles (and Nevada), specifically the gritty grim "glamour".
Maria Wyeth's numb, self-destructive, angst-ridden, indifferent slide into debilitating despair is quite something.
It's clear that Bret Easton Ellis copped this style big time for his Less Than Zero - another firm favourite.
Cheery it ain't, but for those that like that sleazy nihilistic LA vibe (e.g. James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler etc) where the ever present sun will never eradicate the overwhelming emptiness, exploitation, and melancholy, this is sublime.
Joan Didion's pared back style suits the content perfectly. The story is primarily told in short sharp cinematic vignettes."
I'm currently reading The Shards, the latest Bret Easton Ellis which masquerades as biography, or autofiction to be precise. I'm loving it.
The reason for posting is that he explains how he went through a massive Joan Didion phase and aspired to her style in his early novels. Less Than Zero being his debut of course.
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
Less Than Zero (other topics)The Shards (other topics)
Play It as It Lays (other topics)
Tender Is the Night (other topics)
The Weather in the Streets (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Joan Didion (other topics)Raymond Chandler (other topics)
Bret Easton Ellis (other topics)
James Ellroy (other topics)
Lucia Berlin (other topics)
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1970 was also the year of Kent State and Jackson State. There was a war on the children. My brother had been in the army (not voluntarily) and had been on duty at the Pentagon when there was a march on it. He had been in charge of the bullets. Why didn't that happen at Kent State? They shouldn't have had any live rounds available to them. But they did.
This was also the year that I got in a car accident and broke my jaws. So I don't have a lot of good memories of 1970.
Families were at war with each other, even more so than usual. Obviously, Vietnam figured into this too.
Not sure of Joan's political views at that point but she was gradually moved to the left, as many were. Not necessarily the militant left, just views moved for most thinking people. Although everyone who leaned left probably had relatives like some of mine, who leaned right.
Sorry for the rant.