*Spoilers lounge
in this post like drugged out starlets in a producer’s Hollywood home: read on
at your own peril*
Maria, the
protagonist of Joan Didion’s 1970 novel Play It as It Lays, starred in
two films directed by her husband Carter Lang early in their relationship. The first was an artistic film called Maria,
never released, though it “won a prize at a festival in Eastern Europe.” It consists of documentary-like footage of
Maria going through her days. The second
film was a commercially released film called Angel Beach, about a girl,
played by Maria, who is raped by a motorcycle gang. At the end of it, the girl is a survivor, “strolling
across a campus.” Maria dislikes the
first film and is uncomfortable sitting through viewings of it. She doesn’t like being the subject of all the
gazes and thoughts of the (predominantly male) audience. But as for the second film, “she liked
watching the picture: the girl on the screen seemed to have a definite knack
for controlling her own destiny.”
It is not, I
believe, mere chance that led Didion to make these two movies central to Maria’s
acting career, for they act as the two narrative poles in Play It as It Lays. The novel consists of dozens of short
chapters that play out as individual vignettes through which we follow Maria’s
emotional journey from her splitting with Carter to BZ’s suicide. In the structure, and in third person
narration, we are treated to something resembling Maria, the film. We are forced to experience her exchanges
with the people in her life from the outside, kept at a cool distance by the
under-emotional narrator. We are seldom
allowed into Maria’s thoughts. As Maria
herself dislikes the first film, so I have some difficulty with this aspect of
the novel. Didion writes with beauty and
power, but the long suffering of Maria threatens to cross over from interesting
and moving to trying and unsympathetic. And
like Carter’s film, Didion’s novel threatens to become overly artsy at these
moments. What keeps the novel from
becoming an empty and pretentious piece is Didion’s integration of a strong
character and plot, elements found in Maria’s second film, Angel Beach.
Like the
character she played in that film, Maria is a survivor. In her own words, she is a player, and we see
this Maria most clearly in the opening and ending of the novel. Although the novel is primarily narrated in
the third person, the novel begins with a chapter in Maria’s voice. In that chapter, the longest in the book, we
see Maria’s intellect, insight, and strength.
She is a wary and wounded soul, but there is something fierce and
touching as well. It is easy to forget
this strong character as the novel wears on and we, even as we follow her
closely, are kept at an arm’s length.
But as the novel nears its conclusion, we once again get a smattering of
chapters written in first person, and we see Maria’s character contrasted with
BZ. Carter and Helene have been
impatient with and dismissive of Maria throughout the novel, seeing her as
acting out of a desire for attention and faking her symptoms. She is considered weak and uncontrollable, a
danger to Carter’s career. Moreover, her
faults seem particularly tied to her gender—her weeping and semi-hysterical behavior. So it surprising when BZ, whom we knew would
die but knew not how, is the one who swallows a handful of pills to slip into the
darkness. The signs have been there, of
course, when we look back, but he had none of what came across as the histrionics
that Maria displays. In BZ’s suicide,
Didion makes it clear that Maria is neither alone nor weak. We are reminded of the determined Maria of
the opening chapter, and as she lies in the bed with BZ holding his hand and
comforting him on his last journey, we are also reminded of the thing that
keeps Maria going in spite of her difficulties: Kate. With BZ, Maria is comforting, understanding,
and maternal.
By bringing
together the two narrative styles of Maria and Angel Beach in Play It as It
Lays, Didion creates a strong and moving tale.
It is both beautifully written and delicately plotted. Generally, I’m not a fan of books and films
about people who feel dead inside because they tend to be pretentious and sacrifice
character to the atmosphere of ennui. Didion’s
novel works precisely because character and plot are always central to the
novel, even as it explores the dark absence at the center of Maria’s existence.