Didion's Oblivion

I was so taken with Joan Didion’s The White Album, I had to go on to sample her fiction.  Play It As It Lays is a 1970 short novel. It’s set in the Hollywood scene of the late 60’s, and it is truly terrifying.  The language is sparse; the action not quite the point. The main character, Maria Wyeth, is a young actress who is married to a writer/director. Her life, so promising at times, has completely fallen apart.  Her marriage is a shamble, her daughter is institutionalized, her career is on the rocks.  She has lost all semblance of dignity and self-respect. She has truly entered a state of oblivion where nothing applies, nothing matters, nothing holds. She is not evil, but she is broken and helpless. Didion’s prose keeps us staring at that awful place with no chance to avert our gaze.  The book is difficult to read in places.  I just wanted to put it down and seek some small comfort.  If this is life, then …. why bother?

From the 1972 movie with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins

Sex, alcohol, drugs play a part.  But the characters (there isn’t a sympathetic one in sight) bring their unhappiness on themselves with unwavering determination.  In an effort to be known, to be someone (in the world’s eye), to prevail against the odds, to create something worthwhile, they lose their souls in the torrent of the present.  What’s left is wreckage.  Reading this book suggests what it must be like walking through a disaster zone after a tsunami.  Debris everywhere.  Countless signs of what maybe was, what could have been, but is now simply wreckage.  And there are no signs of rebuilding.  These lives cannot be salvaged.

The degree of condensation employed by Didion is remarkable.  Incidents are recounted in few words.  The narrative jumps around, but one can piece together the timeline.  What remains constant is the inevitable slide into non-functional degradation despite the evident talent and considerable financial resources that remain available. It’s the downside of here-all-things-are possible California. Go ahead, try. The gates of hell are wide open.

Intense, scathing and disturbing, this novel will stay with me.