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- In 1960s Los Angeles, Maria Wyeth, a 31-year-old unemployed actress, recounts the events that led to her commitment to a psychiatric facility. In an internal monologue, Maria introduces herself as an uncurious woman determined not to dwell on the past.
www.litcharts.com/lit/play-it-as-it-lays/summary
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Apr 8, 2024 · “Play It As It Lays” ranks No. 1 on our list of the best Hollywood books of all time. Read the full list. Yet stasis, implacability, mark Joan Didion ‘s 1970 novel as surely as change.
- matthew.brennan@latimes.com
- Deputy Editor, Entertainment And Arts
31-year-old Maria Wyeth's story begins as she is recovering from an implied mental breakdown in a psychiatric hospital in the Los Angeles area. Her journey oscillates between dizzying and domestic, as her acting career slows and her personal life collapses.
- Joan Didion
- 1970
May 18, 2017 · Play It As It Lays is based on a single real-life scene that Didion watched play out in Vegas, which suggested to her a woman—a “girl”—who had run into trouble, or run out of options: “A young woman with long hair and a short white halter walks through the casino at the Riviera in Las Vegas at one in the morning.
- Philippa Snow
Mar 9, 2018 · It’s true, her name is mostly synonymous with her iconic nonfiction—SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM and THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING to name a couple—but I think her fiction tends be overlooked, including the excellent PLAY IT AS IT LAYS.
Mar 11, 2022 · Play It As It Lays is bleak, harrowing, and often disturbing — yet nevertheless in true Didion fashion, it is a novel of excess truths. Since its original publication over five decades ago, writers of all genres have sought to emulate the intimate cadence and nuances of Didion’s work in their own prose.
Jan 1, 1970 · A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.
Jul 5, 2017 · Play It As It Lays follows Maria Wyeth, a 30-something mother who has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. How she got there is a story that unwinds quickly and erratically—not at all unlike Maria’s state of mind (or perhaps even of Didion’s, who is notoriously neurotic)—through multiple perspectives and short chapters.
