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Of all the major cities in the United States, Los Angeles is, arguably, one the strangest. Resting near the southwestern edge of the United States, the city has not only determined itself to be the final resting place of many major interstates and highways, but has also awakened itself to the role of "dream-maker", producing the majority of popular films now embraced by the modern world. It sets the tone for the rest of the nation, with regard to fashion, the cultural norm, the socially acceptable, and provides the endless gossip and myth of its own movie icons. One day in Los Angeles crisply exposes the visitor to a concept of "aesthetic quality without real substance". Entertainment can be derived from eavesdropping upon conversations about current makeover trends, lavish retreats, or the scoop on "who's sleeping with whom". Joan Didion's 170 novel, Play It as It Lays, offers similar imagery through the visions of Maria Wyeth, a thirty-one year old woman whose exposure to Los Angeles culture ultimately leads her to an intricate understanding of "nothing". What is most striking about the text is how it achieves a tonality that rests upon "nothing" while vividly exposing the desolation surrounding the city, her friends, her lovers, and herself.
Unlike many novels, where dialogue exposes the design of the text, Play It as It Lays provides its answers through a discourse of the descriptive and metaphorical. The dialogue serves as proof of the "nothingness" in Maria's vision. After the plumbing in her house backs up, she sets about searching for an apartment to sleep in, encountering a building manager whose concern in not the stability of the dwelling, but the history it provides
"You'd be surprised at the history this place has," the man said as he showed her the apartment. He was wearing a pumpkin velour robe and wrap-around glasses and she had found him not in the apartment marked "Mgr." but out on the Fountain Avenue, hosing down the sidewalk. "As a writer, it might interest you to know that Philip Dunne once had -D"
"I'm not a writer," Maria said. Write your Angels and Joan Didion research paper
"Excuse me, it was Sidney Howard." He took off his glasses and wiped them on a sleeve of the beach robe. "Or so the legend goes." (8)
Here the action is not dependent upon the flow of the dialogue between Marian and the manager, but the description of him. The image the manager engaging a possible tenant in a "pumpkin velour beach robe and wrap-around glasses" and of Maria finding him "hosing down the sidewalk" instead of in his apartment as expected. The dialogue reacts against the backdrop of the descriptive. The conversation is about nothing of consequence, resting within an inactive state while the description of the manager remains active and vivid, determining the tone of the excerpt. Dialogue is secondary to the aesthetics of the situation. The condition of the apartment is not the important factor, but the history it provides; the concern is not so much the quality of the dwelling, but the aesthetics of the tenement.
The placement of the aesthetic quality in the forefront of Didion's novel is similar to the form achieved in Georges Perec's 165 Things, A Story of the Sixties. Much like Didion's achievement, the dialogue is sparse, however the descriptive element is far more exaggerated. The focus of Perec's novel is a French couple whose main concerns lie within the realization of social status, academic respect, and cultural enhancement. One way in which they believe this goal is achieved is through the attainment of belongings that exude a novelty or sought after quality. Whether or not they like what they own is of little importance. Value is ascertained through the approval of others. The novel avidly avoids any avenue of plot. Its main concern of the text is character development, using descriptions of "things" owned by the couple in order realize this effect.
There was washing, drying, ironing. Gas, electricity and the telephone. Children. Clothes and underclothes. Mustard. Packet soups, tinned soups. Hair how to wash it, how to dry it, how to make it hold a wave, how to make it shine. Students, fingernails, cough syrup, typewriters, fertilizers, tractors, leisure pursuits, presents, stationary, linen, politics, motorways, alcoholic drinks, mineral water, cheeses, jams, lamps and curtains, insurance and gardening. Nil humani alienum…Nothing that was human was outside their scope. (8-)
The list provided by this excerpt dissects the focus of their lives revealing insight into the lifestyle they lead, or hope to lead. It relies upon the action involved with description in order to provide the reader with a notion of their character. The random list of amenities and daily activities, such as the ways in which "hair" may be groomed and maintained, reflect the couples yearning for emotional fulfillment through the acquisition of property and maintenance of physical posture. The concern for the aesthetic aspects of daily living exists congruently with the couples awareness of the emptiness embodied by their own life. The narrative, without the benefit of dialogue, reveals the emptiness felt by the characters involved.
In similar fashion, Didion's novel reveals aspects of Maria's character through her interaction with the city and its people. Early in the novel the reader learns that one of the things she finds comfort in is driving
Once she was on the freeway and had maneuvered herself to the fast lanes she turned on the radio at high volume and drove. She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura. She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions, and just as a riverman feels the lull between sleeping and waking, so Maria lay at night in the still of Beverly Hills and saw the great signs soar overhead at seventy miles an hour, Normandie ¼, Vermont ¾, Harbor Fwy 1. (15-16)
As Maria succumbs to the "currents" of the freeway she finds a peaceful resolution within her world. The acquisition of this contented quality is emotive of Maria's character and her situation, in regard to others in her life, throughout the text. The act of driving becomes a metaphor for the way she approaches life. She does not posses absolute control of her life, allowing herself to flow along "currents" of others, attuning herself to their "deceptions" and decisions. Her encounter with the apartment manager later in the novel displays such a quality. The manager assumes that she is a "writer" even after she persists that she is not. She does not fervently oppose his assessment with any sense determination, but accepts it without resignation. The abortion she undergoes midway through the novel is not a choice that she felt comfortable with. The decision to have the abortion is ultimately left up to her husband, Carter.
"I'm not sure I want to do that," she said carefully.
"All right, don't do it. Go ahead and have this kid."
He paused, confident in his hand. She waited for him to play it through. "And I'll take Kate."
After he hung up she sat very still. She had a remote sense that everything was happening exactly the way it was supposed to happen. By the time she called him back she was calm, neutral, intermediary calling to clarify terms. "Listen," she said. "If I do this, then you promise I can have Kate? You promise there won't be trouble later?"
"I'm not promising anything," he said. "I said we'll see." (54-55)
Here the controlling figure is Carter. He is "confident" in his decision. Maria, on the other hand, succumbs to the flow of the moment, sacrificing herself to the "currents" possessed by the conversation. She does not offer any resistance to his threat to take her daughter, Kate, away from her. She relies on the feeling that "everything is happening exactly the way it was supposed to happen". Carter's dominance lies within his knowledge of Maria's character. He uses her loftiness to enact an ultimatum that forces Maria to drift along with his decision, placing himself within a position that does not require him hold "promises" but to dictate direction. Furthermore, Kate is resident at a mental hospital and visitations are strictly outlined. Maria's own access to her own daughter is dictated by the hospital and, again, she does little to change or control the situation.
Despite Carter's, and her friend's, impact upon her life she still remains fundamentally aware of, and "attuned" to, their transparency. The only freedom she truly affords herself is the realization of the emptiness and desolation that surrounds her.
"What have you been doing," Carter said the next time she saw him.
"Working. I'm going to be working very soon."
"I mean who've you been seeing."
"Nobody. Helene. BZ. BZ comes by sometimes.
"Don't get into that," Carter said.
"He's your friend," Maria said. (10)
The short chapter displays Maria's acute awareness of the people in her life. As Carter warns her not to "get into" a relationship with Helene and BZ she reminds him that he is supposed to BZ's friend. With one small sentence the text projects the shallowness of Carter's character and the value he places upon friendships. It is, perhaps, a cultural observation concerning life Los Angeles and the flippant attitude taken toward the acquisition, and disposal, of friends "…all is a symbol, every character is a statement that evil reigns, as real as sunshine. The center is not holding. Everyone in the book except Maria acts the pimp, the stud, the call girl, the pervert, the decadent hairdresser, the orgiast, the suicide." (Kazan, 14)
Short chapters, such as the excerpt above, serve as an informational anchor throughout the novel. The reader is exposed, more sharply, to the characterization of Maria, and others, through these concise rest stops.
When I was ten years old my father taught me to assess quite rapidly the shifting probabilities on a craps layout I could trace a layout in my sleep, the field here and the pass line all around, even money on the Big Six or Eight, five-for-one on Any Seven. Always when I play back my father's voice it is with a professional rasp, it goes as it lays, don't do it the hard way. My father advised me that life itself was a crap game it was one of the two lessons I learned as a child. The other was that overturning a rock was apt to reveal a rattlesnake. As lessons go those seem to hold up, but not to apply. (00)
Found near the end of the novel this chapter reveals much concerning Maria's character, her view of the world and how she approaches it, and makes a subconscious correlation between two cities Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Her memory of her father's lesson concerning the game of "craps" and "life" stand in parallel fashion, congruently existing with her astute observations of her friends and her approach to life. Just as she could "trace a layout" in her "sleep", she is able to avidly read the people in her lives, such as Carter and his attitude concerning Kate "She waited for him to play it through. 'And I'll take Kate.'" (54). Her father's professional advice of "…it goes as it lays, don't do it the hard way" reflects her own sense of loftiness, her willingness to succumb to the "currents" within her life. In her dealings with Carter she simply waited for him to "play it through" as if partaking in a game of craps. A correlation between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is also prevalent and provide the novel an interesting undertone that echoes the lives of its characters. Both cities provide the visitor, and the resident, with the "current" of the metropolis routine, Los Angeles with its continuous ebb of freeways and lifestyles and Las Vegas with its animation of momentary games. Las Vegas offers the individual the opportunity to lose oneself within a tangible river of gambling, bright lights, entertainment, and dreams while Los Angeles offers the same vices, shrouded within the intangible qualities of a Hollywood lifestyle. Both cities rely on a "current" of dreams and provide the character of Maria with a comfortable unison with which to engage her life.
Maria's vision of the world leads her to a keen understanding of "nothing". Her act of following the "current" of the Los Angeles lifestyles ultimately leads to intense feelings of disgust and ennui with world and the company she keeps. "Nothing", perhaps, encompasses her understanding of the aesthetic quality of the world she has known. There is no substance to what she has known and at the age of thirty-one she is only now discovering the evil connotations of the "currents" she had drifted along with. At the close of the book she looks forward to the simplicity of "canning" preserves. Her "understanding of nothing" has allowed her to "make plains for the future", finally gaining control of her own destiny (10). It is similar to Voltaire's Candide where the final realization of the novel encompasses the notion that significant change stems from the simplest of action. However, even this glimmer of hope is not without control from outside forces, as she makes her plans from a psychiatric ward.
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