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Literature / Play It as It Lays

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"I am what I am. To look for "reasons" is beside the point. But because the pursuit of reasons is their business here, they ask me questions. Maria, yes or no: I see a cock in this inkblot. Maria, yes or no: A large number of people are guilty of bad sexual conduct, I believe my sins are unpardonable, I have been disappointed in love. How could I answer? How could it apply? NOTHING APPLIES, I print with the magnetized IBM pencil."
Maria

Play It as It Lays is a classic 1970 novel by Joan Didion, centering around a minor Hollywood actress named Maria Wyeth, her feelings (or lack thereof), her complicated family history, and her relationships with the many actors, directors, producers, and other celebrity wannabes who surround her.

It opens with three short, first-person monologues, each given its own chapter and showcasing the thoughts and feelings of a different character. These set the tone of the story and the plot that follows. Maria is currently in a Los Angeles neuropsychiatric hospital for reasons that are not quite clear and she apparently thinks that this is fine. Her ex-husband Carter Lang's and her friend Helene's respective chapters reveal that they are both extremely upset and disappointed in her after an incident involving the death of someone named BZ. The book then goes back in time to before all of this, and we slowly learn how the situation played out.

This is not a happy novel, nor is it a pleasant one. And that's also the point. Reading it sometimes feels like getting heatstroke injected directly into your brain (the desert is, incidentally, a prominent location in the story). Nevertheless, it is also a brilliant dissection of Hollywood in the late '60s.

In 1972, it was adapted into a movie of the same name directed by Frank Perry, with a screenplay by Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne. It stars Tuesday Weld as Maria, Anthony Perkins as BZ, Tammy Grimes as Helene, and Adam Roarke as Carter.


This novel provides examples of:

  • Ambiguous Disorder: Maria's daughter Kate. The doctors don't seem to know what's wrong with her either.
  • Arc Words: "Maria said Nothing". The word "nothing" pops up a lot throughout, especially near the climax of the book where BZ kills himself. The nothingness is even apparent in the book's structure; pages usually have a lot of empty space on them. Exaggerated whenever a chapter consists of nothing more than a single tiny paragraph.
  • Awful Wedded Life: BZ and Helene are very much this, to the point of physical violence on BZ's part. BZ's mother, Carlotta, has to give them money to stay married.
  • Beige Prose: Extremely. Very deliberate and well-done however, as the benign and casual descriptions of the often extremely upsetting events that occur end up giving the book a really terrifying tone. Also fits in with much of the cast's extreme apathy.
  • Book Ends: The book starts with Maria in neuropsychiatry, and ends with Maria in neuropsychiatry... except now the reader's view of her is likely different.
  • Character Development: Most of the characters either continue with their unhealthy habits and artificial lifestyles or get worse, but Maria ends up deciding that she can be happy doing her own thing, even if everyone around her thinks she's gone crazy.
  • Driven to Suicide: BZ. It's implied he had been contemplating suicide for a while.
  • Deadpan Snarker: BZ loves to be this. Unfortunately, it's a coping mechanism. Maria also has her moments.
    [A random woman walks into the room]
    Woman: I'm Jeanelle.
    [Jeanelle leaves]
    Carter: Who the fuck was that?
    Maria: I guess that's Jeanelle.
  • Emotionless Woman: It's clear that Maria has depression. Despite this, however, she still tries to act like things don't bother her when they clearly do. She stresses and angsts over an abortion she's pushed to have but never at any point does she tell anyone about her feelings.
  • Fan Disservice: Maria winds up in several sexual situations, but all of them are played as unsexy at best and creepy at worst. This is because in most of these she seems not to be interested in the sex at all, making her seem like she's being utilized.
  • Horrible Hollywood: Oh yes. Much of the book is dedicated to showing how plastic and empty the Hollywood machine of the late 60's was. It's not hard to believe that despite being sentenced to Neuropsychiatric therapy because her ex-husband and ex-friend thought she had let BZ kill himself, Maria was glad to be out of it.
  • It's All About Me: Most of the characters in the novel care only about their celebrity status. BZ and Maria are the two notable exceptions, though that doesn't mean that they are selfless people, it just means they are more aware of how much it all doesn't matter.
  • Mood Whiplash: All over the place.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Zigzagged. Nothingness seems to symbolize hollowness and meaninglessness for much of the story, but near the end that sort of changes. BZ dies thinking that wanting nothing means he'll never be happy, but Maria figures out that wanting nothing means you're free to do what you like without worrying like your actions need to contribute to some grander purpose.
  • Product Placement: Numerous brands are namedropped throughout, likely as part of the story's satire of American life.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Maria ends up on the receiving end of these multiple times, usually because others are frustrated that she's become so emotionless. Carter seems to go back and forth between insulting her and pleading her to open up to him.
  • Shout-Out: Someone hums "I Get a Kick Out of You" at one point. That point being the car ride on the way to the doctor that would shortly perform Maria's abortion.
  • Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The first line of the book is "What makes Iago evil?"
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very cynical in both tone and content, though the lead's revelation near the end can come off as surprisingly uplifting, depending on how you see it.
  • Troubled Production: An In-Universe example occurs during the desert portion of the book. After actress Suzannah Wood gets beaten up in her hotel room the makeup artists have to spend extra time concealing her bruises so they won't be visible on-camera.

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