Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion, 1970)

This being my first entry about a book, I guess I should point out that I'm not trying to write anything resembling serious literary criticism; rather, these will be brief impressions normally written immediately or shortly after having finished a book, and if my movie "reviews" at times seem disorganized and scattered, get ready.

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Up until now I've only read Joan Didion's nonfiction; I found her 1979 collection of essays The White Album particularly interesting, given the breadth of topics she discusses: everything from migraines to the water system to Doris Lessing, all of it seen through the lens of the 1960s and its aftermath. Her political writing, particularly 1983's Salvador and 2001's Political Fictions, is also worth mentioning. Nevertheless, I think I can safely say that her 1970 novel Play It As It Lays is the best example of Didion's cool intelligence and simply contains some of the finest and most precise prose I've read. Play It As It Lays is a fairly slim book at 214 pages, which are divided mostly into two to three-page chapters, brief snapshots in the life of Maria Wyeth told, as the author described in her Paris Review interview, not by "an omniscient third but a third very close to the mind of the character."

Maria ("pronounced Mar-eye-ah," as she makes clear in the opening section named after and narrated by her) is an actress in Hollywood living in a Beverly Hills home paid for by her director husband Carter Lang. If Didion's scathing indictment of Hollywood and the movie business is every bit as ruthless as Wilder's in Sunset Blvd. (1950), imagine that kind of material as done by L'avventura-era Antonioni and you begin to understand what the author is up to. All in all, it's a powerful, at times frightening read but definitely a major work by one of the most important American writers of the last fifty years.

P. S. I really want to see the 1972 Frank Perry film based on the book. How come it hasn't been released on DVD?

An excerpt:

(p. 210)

Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is "nothing." Now that I have the answer, my plans for the future are these: (1) get Kate, (2) live with Kate alone, (3) do some canning. Damson plums, apricot preserves. Sweet India relish and pickled relish. Apple chutney. Summer squash succotash. There might even be a ready market for such canning: you will note that after everything I remain Harry and Francine Wyeth's daughter and Benny Austin's godchild. For all I know they knew the answer too, and pretended they didn't. You call it as you see it, and stay in the action. BZ thought otherwise. If Carter and Helene aren't careful they'll get the answer too.