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A review by versmonesprit
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.0
Didion must have known she was playing a losing game when she decided to repeat what Camus had done in The Stranger 28 years before.
Maria Wyeth knows there’s no meaning to life as it is, she plays the cards she’s dealt even though they cause her grief, but she also knows ultimately we make our own meaning (e.g. her future plans to get her daughter, and to can fruit). Sound familiar? That’s because this is the philosophy told through Meursault’s story.
Play It as It Lays is almost formulaic, but at least it’s not an exact replica: the heat doesn’t really come into play, the gun shows up but as a taunt to Chekhov it doesn’t go off on anyone, and the main character and (occasional) narrator does not kill someone. And where it’s Meursault’s mother’s death that kicks off speculations about him, Maria is already dissociating before any major impact (here, the abortion) takes place.
Sure, the book is bleak — very bleak. The book description alleges this is ennui. But is it? Maria isn’t quite listless; she’s in fact highly emotional. Her alienation is to interactions; she remains connected to her feelings. She’s more just profoundly sad, than going through existential ennui. Her apathy is a façade, her crisis is not existential but personal.
And then the rest is disappointment. The desert is overshadowed by the majority of the book being set in the city, the dialogues feel like caricatures at times, the snake imagery is abandoned abruptly for no reason, the driving theme and its underlying desperation to just go are ended way before they attain their full potential as a device for the book, the first person narrator states her full name (it feels like a writer’s insecurity that they’ll be incapable of building a real character, so they must resort to fictional facts like the character’s government name) and keeps addressing the reader, multiple PoVs are presented even though the book immediately defects to third person narration which gives it ample opportunity to reiterate the sentiments expressed by Maria’s ex-husband and BZ’s widow in the sort of “prologue”, the first person narration returns just to interrupt the book’s climax, the overall tone feels very anti-abortion which is disturbing, not to mention the f-slur being randomly thrown out for no reason that I can conceive as non-malevolent on the writer’s part, and the chapters are so infuriatingly short (there are 84+3 of them) that they are just snippets that disrupt the narration continuity and hence the reading rhythm. One could argue this fragmentation reflects the way Maria experiences her reality, but then they should’ve been shorter, more ambiguous, more broken, less summary of several days at a time sometimes. No, it’s clear this was only out of convenience for the author.
Speaking of whom… was she sponsored by Coca Cola? Because I cannot think of any other reason Didion would feel the need to precise Maria is drinking Coca Cola so many times!
Oh and, her name is pronounced Mar-eye-ah. She says it herself, directly, to the reader, because that’s important! and quality writing!
Maria Wyeth knows there’s no meaning to life as it is, she plays the cards she’s dealt even though they cause her grief, but she also knows ultimately we make our own meaning (e.g. her future plans to get her daughter, and to can fruit). Sound familiar? That’s because this is the philosophy told through Meursault’s story.
Play It as It Lays is almost formulaic, but at least it’s not an exact replica: the heat doesn’t really come into play, the gun shows up but as a taunt to Chekhov it doesn’t go off on anyone, and the main character and (occasional) narrator does not kill someone. And where it’s Meursault’s mother’s death that kicks off speculations about him, Maria is already dissociating before any major impact (here, the abortion) takes place.
Sure, the book is bleak — very bleak. The book description alleges this is ennui. But is it? Maria isn’t quite listless; she’s in fact highly emotional. Her alienation is to interactions; she remains connected to her feelings. She’s more just profoundly sad, than going through existential ennui. Her apathy is a façade, her crisis is not existential but personal.
And then the rest is disappointment. The desert is overshadowed by the majority of the book being set in the city, the dialogues feel like caricatures at times, the snake imagery is abandoned abruptly for no reason, the driving theme and its underlying desperation to just go are ended way before they attain their full potential as a device for the book, the first person narrator states her full name (it feels like a writer’s insecurity that they’ll be incapable of building a real character, so they must resort to fictional facts like the character’s government name) and keeps addressing the reader, multiple PoVs are presented even though the book immediately defects to third person narration which gives it ample opportunity to reiterate the sentiments expressed by Maria’s ex-husband and BZ’s widow in the sort of “prologue”, the first person narration returns just to interrupt the book’s climax, the overall tone feels very anti-abortion which is disturbing, not to mention the f-slur being randomly thrown out for no reason that I can conceive as non-malevolent on the writer’s part, and the chapters are so infuriatingly short (there are 84+3 of them) that they are just snippets that disrupt the narration continuity and hence the reading rhythm. One could argue this fragmentation reflects the way Maria experiences her reality, but then they should’ve been shorter, more ambiguous, more broken, less summary of several days at a time sometimes. No, it’s clear this was only out of convenience for the author.
Speaking of whom… was she sponsored by Coca Cola? Because I cannot think of any other reason Didion would feel the need to precise Maria is drinking Coca Cola so many times!
Oh and, her name is pronounced Mar-eye-ah. She says it herself, directly, to the reader, because that’s important! and quality writing!