Play It As It Lays: Amazon.ca: Joan Didion: Books

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"There hasn't been another American writer of Joan Didion's quality since Nathanel West . . . A terrifying book."--John Leonard, The New York Times

"Simple, restrained, intelligent, well-structured, witty, irresistibly relentless, forthright in diction, and untainted by the sensational, Play It As It Lays is a book of outstanding literary quality."--Library Journal

"[A] scathing novel, distilling venom in tiny drops, revealing devastation in a sneer and fear in a handful of atomic dust."--J. R. Frakes, Book World

Book Description

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 soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

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WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
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Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Deserts of Ennui, Feb 1 2003

By

J C E Hitchcock (Tunbridge Wells, Kent, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Play It as It Lays (Paperback)

There is, wrote Charles Baudelaire, a vice which is uglier, more wicked and filthier than any other, a vice which he called "L'Ennui". This is a stronger term than the mere "boredom" which is its literal meaning, because the word also implies a state of indifference and moral and spiritual deadness. It is a state of mind frequently invoked in Baudelaire's poetry, and one which is also at the centre of Joan Didion's novel.

The central character is Maria Wyeth, a Hollywood actress in her early thirties. Fate has, in many ways, been unkind to her- her mother died in a car crash, her career is in trouble, her marriage to an uncaring husband is also failing and she has a mentally-handicapped daughter. Maria reacts by retreating into the sterile world occupied by most of the novel's other characters, one of casual and promiscuous sex, drink, drugs and "Ennui", both in its literal and its extended Baudelairean senses.

Told in a series of very short vignettes, the novel traces the progress of the disintegration of Maria's life. She is bullied into an abortion by her husband. (It is interesting that a novel by a woman writer treats abortion not as a woman's right but as another weapon of male dominance). Her marriage ends in divorce. In the final scene her moral nihilism means that she deliberately fails to prevent the suicide of a friend.

Much of the book is set in the deserts of southern California and Nevada, and Maria spends much of her time driving on long but aimless car journeys through this landscape. The imagery of the desert is clearly used to suggest the aridity of the spiritual world in which the characters live, and Maria's meaningless journeys are a symbol of her inability to escape this world. It is noteworthy that although the book is set in the late sixties or early seventies, a time of great ferment and social change in America, news of the outside world plays virtually no part in the book; Miss Didion's characters seem able to shut it out completely.

The bleakness of the world inhabited by Maria and her acquaintances means that this is certainly not a feelgood novel. It is, in many ways, not an easy one to like. It is, however, certainly one worth reading.

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3.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile read, Jan 28 2008

By

Reader and Writer "Chris" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Play It As It Lays (Paperback)

It's fast paced, built like a play, boasting speeding dialog and with well developed characters. She has a definite ear for the spoken word.

In a way though, it's the type of novel that came into being during the seventies and eighties, this pop-py, breezy, scream of the moment sort of writing that was more concerned with nailing the G&T drinking happy hour than really constructing much of a novel. It reads like this, here a drink there a drink, everywhere a drink drink. And characters stumble into the next scene with raging headaches, chastised by friends who say hangovers signal decline and age.

It's not a book that thrills, it's not particularly old or new feeling. It's been done by so many writers since and with so much more punch and wit. Still, she deserves to be read, and she can hold her own. What's great is not the plot nor the story, but the unerring tone in which her characters speak. That in itself is one heck of a lesson.

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1.0 out of 5 stars What a downer, Jun 30 2004

By

IRA Ross (LYNDHURST, NJ United States 07071) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Play It as It Lays (Paperback)

I just hope that most Hollywood film makers and actors are not like the ones represented in this book. When they are not on the set filming, they are either getting drunk or popping pills, committing adulterous acts or being beaten up. Maria Wyeth, an actress, is portrayed as the unhappiest of the lot. Besides losing her mother to a car accident when Maria was a young girl, she is currently experiencing the messy break-up of her marriage and then chooses to abort presumably her husband's baby. These events leave Maria traumatized and drained, and she eventually becomes severely unhinged. None of the book's characters is remotely likable or sympathetic, although Ms. Didion seems to think Maria is simply tragic. I believe that she is just too inconsequential to assume that role. If this book has a theme it about the shallowness, emptiness and nothingness of life, that is when it is not overrun with evilness. Ms. Didion's moral seems to be, "don't look under a rock--a poisonous snake may be laying there ready to bite you." Not a pretty picture.

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Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Not particularly memorable
The story is as hollow and forgettable as the character the book is about. It's an easy read, and not exactly bad writing, but it didn't grab me and it's not going in my permanent... Read more

Published on Sep 7 2003 by Mary

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Mistake Pop Culture Prose for Genius
First, I would like to examine the character of Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah). In my life, I have never read about a character so lacking in dynamism as Maria. Read more

Published on Aug 13 2003 by Kenneth Ryan