Joan Didion

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, "Play It As It Lays" captures the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society and exposed a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

A Novel

Play It As It Lays

Helen 

She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but sayine she was sorry did not seem entirely adequate, and in any case what she was sorry about seemed at once too deep and too evanescent for any words she knew, seemed so vastly more complicated than the immediate fact that it was perhaps better left unravelled. 

“‘don’t you ever get tired of doing favors for people?’ there was a long silence. ‘you don’t know how tired,’ bz said.”

“‘what else are you tired of.’ ‘i don’t know.’ ‘you’re getting there,’ bz said. ‘getting where.’ ‘where i am.’”

“‘why do you say those things. why do you fight.’ he would sit on the bed and put his head in his hands. ‘to find out if you’re alive.’”

“fuck it, i said to helene. fuck it, i said to them all, a radical surgeon of my own life. never discuss. cut. in that way i resemble the only man in los angeles county who does clean work.”

“one thing in my defense, not that it matters: i know something carter never knew, or helene, or maybe you. i know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing. why, bz would say. why not, i say.” 

Grace McCarter

She drove to the beach, but there was oil scum on the sand and a red tide in the flaccid surf and mounds of kelp at the waterline. The kelp hummed with flies. The water lapped warm, forceless.

“You were going to come over and use the sauna," Larry Kulik said. 

"Hear you're ready for a nuthouse, you want to know." 

“I’m a good friend to people I like," Larry Kulik said. “Think it over."

This quote resonates deeply with me; it's as if Didion distilled the complexities of life's inheritance into a few profound lines. I find a personal connection to the interplay of inherited traits she describes, with a particular emphasis on migraines.

I, too, constantly experience migraines. The thought that they might come from my mother brings an extra layer, strangely making the experience not only bearable but also oddly heartwarming.

For a first-time reader (like me) not accustomed to Didion's work, anticipate an artistic departure from verbosity.

傑恩

“From my mother I inherited my looks and a tendency to migraine. From my father I inherited an optimism which did not leave me until recently.”

Sidney R

I was raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what went out on the last. 

Play It As It Lays quotes

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