Play It As It Lays

 Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion is like an old friend. I read it every few years, usually in less than a week, and admire it every time. Her story of mid-twentieth-century ennui and malaise is a rare perfect novel: I wouldn't change a single word. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and its laser focus (highlighted by brief chapters, some only a paragraph long) serves the bleakness of its subject. Maria Wyeth, the absorbing protagonist, drifts through each page like a character in a Beach House song. The whole pharmacy of palliative drugs--Dexedrine, Seconal, Edrisal, tetracyline capsules, ergot tablets, Nembutal--that course through her system do not, in fact, solve her persistent nihilism. Play It As It Lays is a spiritual descendent of another perfect novel, The Sun Also Rises, and is just as powerful. There are parts of the novel that I intentionally don't read before I sleep at night, and I don't agree with Maria's conclusions about the universe. There are only a few people to whom I would actually recommend this book. Still, its journey into the "hard white empty core of the world" is as masterfully rendered as anything I've ever read.