Play It as It Lays
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. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the...
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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. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780374529949 (0374529949)
ASIN: 374529949
Publish date: November 15th 2005
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages no: 213
Edition language: English
“There was silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant.”Whenever Maria called, it was as if the ringing of the phone heralded the end of any conviviality I might ha...
What exactly is the point to this novel? Trying my best to fathom something, but it's proving futile. Something about nothingness and the lack of meaning to human existence? I don't know. Was a very frustrating read. Would've given a worse rating, but it is well written. I just can't get to the poin...
On the basis of this, I prefer Didion's non-fiction. This was closest in tone to the essay "Slouching Toward Bethlehem", which was probably my least favourite in that collection. This book is very much of its time, late sixties, and it was hard for me to relate to the despair of characters whose 'pr...
A strange and elliptical novel. Something I probably should read a second time (as someone said, it's over before you know it, and suddenly you don't know what to do). I'm in a bit of a rush right now, so I can't really elaborate.
Read about 3/4 of the book, but couldn't maintain enough interest to finish. I didn't sympathize with or understand the characters.
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