play it as it lays
Ok now for Joan Didion. For those who don’t know who she is (which is actually more people than I realised – maybe it’s just a UK school thing), she’s this American writer who started at Vogue, and then did a bunch of something called New Journalism in the 60s (like subjective essays about life), publishing this book called Slouching Towards Bethlehem (which I have yet to read) compiling her articles about Californian life. Then she wrote a bunch of fiction and nonfiction.
Anyways, I warn. This book is heavy and dark. But it’s not difficult to digest if that makes sense? Like, the main character (Maria) is so devoid of emotion and doesn’t care about anything, so you kind of don’t realise you’re reading about quite traumatic experiences for the character. Every day, Maria longs to visit her four-year-old daughter, who is at a mental institute, but is constantly discouraged by the father (Carter – a film director). When she falls pregnant straying outside her abusive relationship with Carter, he tells her to get an abortion. But since she’s so dissociated in a sense, it’s like instead of pressing a finger into a gushing open wound, you’re just tapping at a pretty grim bruise. I mean the whole daughter thing’s not even really mentioned that much, and maybe this is just how I felt, but to me that was the real tragedy of the book. How much Maria just wishes she was with her. You can feel that even without any really emotional gushy writing about it. It’s just so heart-breaking.
Joan does this really clever thing where, you start the book with a 1st person chapter from Maria. She’s who you know. Then Carter gets a page or two, and finally Helene (a friend). And then all of a sudden, you’re met with the rest of the book, a 3rd person who follows Maria very closely.
Maria’s just kind of numb to all the games and rules in Hollywood. And also numb because of all the drugs. She’s passive, she’s withdrawn, from life, from everything. But I don’t know, usually such a disinterested character elicits a disinterested reader. But there’s a warmth you feel towards Maria.
I’m finding it very hard to write about this book. It’s above my abilities. Joan is just too clever, and I’ve only read this book once, it definitely needs to be reread. Especially after you’ve got to the end and understood how Maria thinks. You need to read the book as it lays, and not as book of reason – seems obvious but it’s kind of difficult.
There’s a recurring theme about “nothingness” which I haven’t intellectually wrapped my head around yet but I’m sure it means something very smart and poetic.
extra! fun facts
The cover of this book (by Joan Didion), shows a picture of Marcel Duchamp! Playing chess, with… Eve Babitz!!
The story has a pretty fun history. Basically, Eve had met this other guy, Walter Hopps who was an art curator in LA in the early 60s. Eve was very well connected, that’s kind of her whole thing. Anyways Walter Hopps and her started having an affair, he was married to a woman names Shirley. And basically, Walter didn’t invite Eve to his exhibition of Marcel Duchamp pictures because Shirley was in town. Gasp. Even Eve’s sister was invited!!! So anyways Eve was suuuper angry, and wanted revenge. Very Blair Waldorf, Walter Scott, Caesar, um other people famous for revenge schemes.
So basically, she set up the photo to make him jealous. She was given the idea by a friend, and apparently said it was the “best idea [she’d] ever heard in her life…it was not only vengeance, it was art”. In the future, I aim for such pointed artistic vision in the resolution of all my romantic problems.
It actually became quite a famous photograph, and Eve Babitz even writes that a character in her novel Sex and Rage (which I’m currently making my way through) has this photo up on the wall. And I bought these three books at the same time unknowingly! (Slow Days Fast Company, Play it as it Lays, Sex and Rage). What a lovely coincidence.
if you enjoyed play it as it lays, you might enjoy:
slow days fast company
Eve Babitz
sorrow and bliss
Meg Mason