Play It as It Lays (FSG Classics) - Softcover

Didion, Joan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374529949 ISBN 13: 9780374529949

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Synopsis

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, "Play It As It Lays" captures the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society and exposed a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

About this title

Review:

"There hasn't been another American writer of Joan Didion's quality since Nathanel West . . . A terrifying book." --John Leonard, The New York Times

"Simple, restrained, intelligent, well-structured, witty, irresistibly relentless, forthright in diction, and untainted by the sensational, Play It As It Lays is a book of outstanding literary quality." --Library Journal

"[A] scathing novel, distilling venom in tiny drops, revealing devastation in a sneer and fear in a handful of atomic dust." --J. R. Frakes, Book World

From the Back Cover:

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, 'Play It As It Lays' captures the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society and exposed a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

Maria Wyeth is an emotional drifter who has become almost anesthetized against pain and pleasure. She finds herself, in her early thirties, radically divorced from husband, lover, friends, her own past and her own future. Actress, daughter, wife, mother, woman: she has played each role to the sound of one hand clapping.

'Play It As It Lays' is set in a place beyond good and evil, literally in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and the barren wastes of the Mojave, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul. Two decades after its original publication, it remains a profoundly disturbing novel.

‘’There hasn’t been another American writer of Joan Didion’s quality since Nathanael West...A terrifying book.’’
JOHN LEONARD, 'New York Times'

‘‘Didion is a better writer than Cheever.’’
ANGELA CARTER, 'Guardian'

‘‘A writer of haunting power and global vision who sees a world on the edge of nervous breakdown and is not afraid to deliver the news.’’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘‘Joan Didion’s acupuncture prose hits cells we didn’t know we had and reinvigorates our entire sensibility. She circles her characters and key events as she might a dangerous snake.’’
JILL NEVILLE, 'Sunday Times'

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0374529949
• ISBN 13: 9780374529949
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 240