It's not often that you are completely pulled into a piece of literature and left wishing there were more pages to lose yourself in. This novel I'm writing about today does just that with its terse sentences and poignant voice. In fact, TIME included it on its list, "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005."
Author: Joan Didion
Title: "Play It as It Lays" (1970)
Number of Pages: 214 in the 2005 Farrar, Straus and Giroux Edition
Reminiscent of: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hollywood is the pop-cultural center of America. It is where our fantasies are enacted, our idols worshipped and our dreams manifested. At the same time, Hollywood has a dark side. Go to the Walk of Fame and witness panhandling costumed citizens as well as rampant tourist-driven consumerism. Read the stars and note just how few of them you recognize — the flash of fame fades faster than those lasting emblems on the street. And how many Hollywood postcards, T-shirts and shot glasses does one need?
"Play It as It Lays" captures the dual nature of Hollywood and the people who move in its circles. Focused on Maria Wyeth (pronounced Mariah), a 30-something actress, Didion's novel tracks her life and move from Nevada to Los Angeles. From rags to riches, one could say it reflects the lives of countless actresses, models and musicians.
The fiction bounces from the twisted lives of Hollywood rich and elite to topics tied to the true human condition: dead parents, suicides, ill children and broken families. "Play It as It Lays" balances all aspects in a composed manner of short chapters and intriguing scenes.
Didion has inspired so many modern writers, including Bret Easton Ellis from my first week's column, and is currently one of the most eloquent and prolific novelists. At the same time, she relates to novelists of a bygone age, tracing Hemingway and Fitzgerald as her own inspirations. In truth, her strong and simple sentences are reminiscent of Hemingway, while her choice to tell the tragic tales of the elite reflect Fitzgerald. In this way, she is a literary linchpin, binding together the past to the present.
In addition, although Maria's life begins spiraling out of control in her early 30s, her youth was the impetus for her unraveling. It's just not until later that the effects really begin to settle in. This shows the subsequent consequences of youthful temptations.
"Play It as It Lays" is one of my all-time favorite novels. It undertakes heavy questions like the meaning of life and consequences of wrong choices. For example, in a beautiful quote, Maria asks, "I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?" What a question.
Didion has also recently come out with a new book, "Blue Nights" (2011), which documents her relationship with her own daughter. To date, she has written five fiction books, 13 non-fiction books and five screenplays. Born in California, Didion began writing when she was five years old and was always an avid reader. Graduating from University of California, Berkeley, with an English major, Didion won a competition and was given a job at Vogue as the prize. She married a writer, John Gregory Dunne, and began her literary career in 1963, pioneering a field of new journalism, or literary nonfiction. Didion and her husband co-wrote many pieces before his tragic and sudden death in 2003, followed by Didion's daughter's death in 2005.
Didion's stories reflect the incredible sadness of her own life, but also her hope, which prevails even in the darkest of times. That duality — the dark and the light — of Maria, Hollywood, Didion and even every one of us is captured in "Play It as It Lays."
--
Alexandria Chu is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Alexandria.Chu@tufts.edu.
