Play It as It Lays  

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Play It As It Lays is a 1970 novel by the American writer Joan Didion.

Plot summary

The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, followed by short reminiscences of her friend Helene, and ex-husband, film producer Carter Lang. The further narration is conducted from a third-person perspective in eighty-four chapters of terse, controlled and highly visual prose typical of Didion.

Maria's story begins as she is recovering from a mental breakdown in a psychiatric hospital in the Los Angeles area, but soon flashes back to her life before the hospital. A not-quite lurid view of life in Hollywood follows. Didion's late 1960s Los Angeles is a mix of grimness and glamour. Maria's journey oscillates between dizzying and domestic, as her acting career slows and her personal life collapses.

Maria contrasts her life in Los Angeles with her childhood in Silver Wells, Nevada, a small town so inconsequential that it no longer exists. The daughter of a gambling father and a neurotic mother who bet on a mine and lost, Maria moved to New York to become an actress. In New York, Maria works temporarily as a model and meets Ivan Costello, a psychopathic blackmailer who has no hesitation exploiting Maria for her money or her body.

In New York, Maria receives news of her mother's death in a car wreck, possibly a suicide. Her father dies soon after, leaving useless mineral rights to his business partner and friend Benny Austin. Maria withdraws from acting and modeling, splits up with Ivan, and eventually meets Carter and moves to Hollywood. Later, we find that she and Carter have a 4-year-old daughter Kate, who is under mental and physical "treatment" for some "aberrant chemical in her brain". Maria truly loves Kate, as indicated by her tender descriptions, her frequent hospital visits, and her determination "to get her out".

An inevitable divorce, and the ensuing social chaos bring Maria to indulge in self-destructive behavior. She plunges into long nights of compulsive driving, wandering Southern California's freeways, through motels and bars, drinking and chancing sexual encounters with actors and ex-lovers. After a series of disasters for Maria, infidelity among her friends adds further chaos to her life. Her friend BZ commits suicide and Maria is institutionalized. From her hospital, Maria turns her visitors away, and plans for a day she might see her daughter again.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Play It as It Lays" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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