Play It as It Lays is a 1970 novel by American writer Joan Didion. Time magazine included the novel in its list of the "100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005". The novel has been credited for helping define modern American Fiction and has been described as an "instant classic". It is known for depicting the nihilism and the illusory glamor of life in Hollywood, as well as capturing the landscape and culture of 1960s Los Angeles.
About the book, Joan Didion said, "I didn’t think it was going to make it [...] And suddenly it did make it, in a minor way. And from that time on I had more confidence."
The book bears some resemblance to Didion's life, as Didion also had a daughter with a psychological disorder and drove the same car as the protagonist of the book (a yellow corvette stingray). Like the protagonist, Didion lived in New York before moving to California. However, Didion asserted that the book was not autobiographical.
The book was adapted into a 1972 film starring Tuesday Weld as Maria and Anthony Perkins as BZ. Didion co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, John Gregory Dunne.
Plot introduction
The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth (pronounced Mar-eye-ah), 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.
Plot
Maria's story begins as she is recovering from an implied 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. Her story is revealed though flashbacks and flash forwards.
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 neurotic mother and a gambling father, 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.
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 four-year-old daughter Kate. Kate is in a treatment facility for an unspecified "aberrant chemical in her brain" (what would probably be considered low functioning autism in present day). Maria loves Kate, as indicated by her tender descriptions, her frequent hospital visits, and her determination "to get her out".
When Maria discovers she is pregnant, she is unsure if her husband, Carter or her lover, Les Goodwin is the father and she tells Carter the truth. Carter urges Maria to have an abortion, and suggests that if she chooses to have the child, he will take full custody of their daughter. Set in a time before the legalization of abortion, Maria must find a doctor who will perform an illegal abortion. Maria follows steps to covertly contact and visit the only doctor who does "clean work" in Los Angeles. Maria has an illegal abortion, performed with local anesthetic, in a house where there are newspapers on the floor. Feeling distress after her abortion, Maria begins to have vivid nightmares about dying infants and rattlesnakes.
An inevitable divorce, and the ensuing social chaos bring Maria to indulge in self-destructive behavior. Maria disengages from her social world as she plunges into long days of compulsive driving, wandering Southern California's freeways, through motels and casinos, 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.