MARIA C’EST MOIOgni libro di Joan Didion che leggo è più bello del precedente, e sono tutti magnifici. Non è certo la trama che lo rende così grande, la storia è presto detta, è già sentita: giovane starlet di Hollywood precocemente sul viale del tramonto in preda a ennui, divide il suo tempo tra sesso droghe troppo poco r&r e farmaci vari; ci sono registi, produttori e attori, film girati nel deserto californiano, cocktail, party, ristoranti, lounge, Las Vegas, casino, Corvette, suicidi, tentati o riusciti; fragilità, vite sbandate irrisolte in fuga… Tutto già visto e già sentito, in parte già anche vissuto.Didion prende questa banale materia e la trasforma in qualcosa d’irripetibile: per farlo, usa lo strumento principale della sua professione, le parole: quelle che sceglie, le parole che sceglie di lasciare, e quelle che sceglie di tacere… Dietro questo breve romanzo c’è una lezione di scrittura, a partire dal lungo lavoro di lima, che mi ricorda molto quello dell’autore di Madame Bovary: riflettere e misurare, tagliare e aggiungere, togliere e mettere, tagliare di nuovo e aggiungere di nuovo, nell’incessante perenne ricerca dell'unica parola giusta (‘le mot juste’ di flaubertiana memoria, appunto), quella che permette di proseguire.Per arrivare a scrivere così, occorre grande talento e sconfinata tenacia:Era l'ora in cui in ogni casa del vicinato le belle donne si profumavano e si infilavano i braccialetti di smalto e davano il bacio della buonanotte ai loro bei bambini, l'ora della grazia apparente e della musica promessa, e nel giardino di Maria l'aria sapeva di gelsomino e l'acqua della piscina toccava i trenta gradi Didion intreccia i punti di vista: il romanzo si apre con il breve racconto in prima persona della protagonista, Maria, pronuncia Mar-ai-a, tanto per chiarire le cose fin dal principio, al quale seguono quelli ancora più brevi, sempre in prima persona, dell’amica Helene, e del marito Carter. Poi entra in scena il narratore e la storia procede fino alla fine affidata alla sua voce, salvo qualche raro intermezzo in prima persona nel quale ritorna il punto di vista di Maria.Capitoli e capitoletti, salti avanti e indietro nel tempo, omissioni secondo il precetto hemingwayano dell’iceberg, uno stile che unisce distanza e calore, sospensione e immersione, impalpabilità e profondità, precisione ed evanescenza, uno stile che riesce nell’impresa di essere, nella stessa pagina, gelido e struggente, sublime e durissimo.E allora la banalità della storia di Maria è solo apparente: Maria è un’eroina che non dimenticherò e ho già voglia di ritrovare e rileggere. Didion rinuncia al contrasto tra bene e male: penetra l’essenza intima dei personaggi, ognuno agisce seguendo delle motivazioni che sono in fondo comprensibili, ognuno è l’eroe della sua storia, non li limita con il suo giudizio, hanno tutti un’anima e sono capaci di redenzione, li racconta dalla ‘giusta distanza’, così lontano e così vicino, non li condanna e non li abbandona mai.Vita vissuta nel dolore e trascorsa nella sofferenza – un buco nero che risucchia e un vuoto enorme che consuma, nella costante attesa che arrivi quell’amore di cui è stata privata già dall’infanzia – trentuno anni, che sono tredici, ma anche già cento – un’esistenza sbagliata, un’anima in fuga, una solitudine che circonda… Maria piange molto, guida la sua Corvette per autostrade che portano nel deserto - più che vivere, trascorre il tempo - parla poco e quando parla non dice nulla sul motivo delle sue lacrime - vorrebbe ma non può, vorrebbe crescere sua figlia che invece vive in una clinica per gravi malattie, vorrebbe tenere il figlio che ha in grembo ma deve perderlo, vorrebbe restare con Carter ma sa che è inutile…Lieve sospesa tenera delicata dura glaciale Maria, ti svegli al mattino con gli occhi gonfi e pesanti e ti chiedi se hai pianto nel sonno, vorresti prendere la vita come viene e stare al gioco ma proprio non ce la fai, non ti riesce, Maria, sei arrivata là dove nulla esiste e non hai più voglia di giocare…Grandissima, immensa Joan.
A few months ago I had a dream. I was a participant in a Know Your Boo-cum-Hunger Games style game show, in which I had to answer questions about my boyfriend to save him from death. The question came, "What's your boo's favorite color?" and I had no idea what the answer was. Like most dreams, I awoke before the definitive event, only to know that I had failed.My own responses to the questions of favorites are arbitrary - they are learned responses to questions no one ever asks. The stratification of loving the particular has aged out of us. There are no appropriate responses to preference that aren't prefaced with "Well, right now, it's ..." or "I could never pick one, but ..." Yet I maintain the data, whether or not it's applicable. But is Maria right here, does nothing really apply?In deference to the narrative I present this:My favorite band is The Ramones.My favorite movie is Bachelorette.My favorite color is gold.My favorite leisure activity is driving a byway.My favorite food is insalata caprese.My favorite book is Play it as it Lays.Although, upon rereading it, there's little in Play it as it Lays for me anymore that I haven't found better somewhere else. The contrast of femininity abutting the feral city, that's better in Good Morning, Midnight. The rancorous heat shimmers more in A Book of Common Prayer. The inventory of what won't be done again is wittier and more immediate in One DOA One on the Way. The capricious drive won't ever be better than in Why Did I Ever.So what then? My favorite band is really The Roots. My favorite movie used to be Sabrina. I wear a lot of black but it's not my favorite, it's my preference. I love the tomatoes and the mozzarella di bufala in caprese but I always eat around the basil.Maybe I relate closer to what came before and after. My favorite book is actually Why Did I Ever, because it's exacting and spare, whereas Play it as it Lays gives into hazy allusion. Both are full of short chapters and women and piloting the car almost but not quite far enough. Things aren't unchanged as much as they are displaced; a firmament allowed enough room to move with the tides, the seismic, the little earthquakes.
What do You think about Play It As It Lays (2005)?
This story is of Maria. She's in a mental institution or neuropsychaitric center as they were called in the '60's. Her daughter is also commited and is being treated for a chemical imabalance. I think the daughter's around the age of 4. Maria's seen some bad stuff in her day, but the straw that broke the camel's back...well, I won't spoil it. But, there was something that she was blamed for...something that she allowed to happen. And that's why she's holed up undergoing psychotherapy. She tries to tell us there's no reason for the things that have happened or for why she is the way she is. She just is. Like rattlesnakes just are. She just is.If ever there was a passage to tidy up a book, a "main idea"...it's the one below. It speaks for Maria and for "Play it as it Lays" much better than I could."One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing."
—Alison
Joan Didion once said that writing is a hostile act. An imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.Play It As It Lays, published in 1970, slaps down at your soul's kitchen table and announces itself, not loudly, but in a voice that crawls under your skin, not really caring whether or not you want to see anyone, and lights a cigarette. In between noxious exhales, it tells you some version of the truth. Maria Wyeth's story, told in shifting first and close third person, is a 20th century existential tragedy, a sort of American The Stranger, in which Maria is Meursault and Los Angeles, Algiers; a psychiatric hospital stands in for a prison; there is a Nevada desert instead of a North African beach.At thirty-one, Maria is an actress of fading relevance with an impending divorce and a beloved four-year-old daughter in a care facility for the developmentally disabled (oh, my heart stuttered at the term 'retarded' used throughout the book). No one at the institution combs Kate's hair and the sad tangles Maria tries to smooth out during her visits are somehow emblematic of the chaos in her own life. The chaos isn't a busy one. It isn't an overflow of demands. It is the chaos of nothingness. “By the end of the week she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began, about the exact point in space and time that was the difference between Maria and other.” Maria has become paralyzed by life, by the emptiness of her career and her relationships, where friends exchange each other as lovers as often as they exchange yesterday's soiled underwear for today's clean pair. She has had her insides scraped clean of a child conceived not in love, but in desperate boredom, and that act—the back alley abortion so terribly, graphically evoked here, remember, this is the late 1960s—is the ultimate creation of empty chaos. Maria finds solace traveling the freeways that criss-cross this City of Angels. Cruising the nothingness of the tarmac is the only time she feels safe and in control. Yes, this is a wrenching read. But so brilliant. The multiple points-of-view are deftly handled, the lightest touch bringing in this character or that. Didion's writing, with its echoes of Hemingway and McCullers, is spare and unflinching. The chapters are short and white space is left on the page, reflecting the white space in Maria's life that she tries to fill with alcohol, sex, acting, driving.Few novels have taken me so deeply inside one character, injecting me into her bloodstream, so that I breathe with her, see through her eyes. I love Maria, I hate her, I want to protect her, I want her out of my life. Time has done nothing to diminish the power of Maria's story, yet Play It As It Lays is a fascinating time capsule of feminist literature. Highly recommended.
—Julie
Lifes tough when you're a pill popping actress trying to cope with an abortion. Quick and entertaining enough to pass time on subway rides. I had trouble relating or empathizing with the characters in the book, though i had a hunch i'm not supposed to. Maybe its LA that i dont like? It had a Hurly Burly type feel to it, except its not funny. This book probably would have been more effective if i read it when i was 15, when wallowing in depression seemed glamourous. Honestly i had a hard time absorbing much of the story so this review is irrelavent. i'll read it again when i decide to draw a warm bath, light some candles and pray i don't get a yeast infection from spending too much time in the tub. no really i'll read it again.
—Martha
