"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. 'Why?' BZ would say. 'Why not' i say'".
Jacket Copy: A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It As It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose both 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—Play It As It Lays 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.
Similar to: Bret Easton Ellis, Nathanael West, Hemingway
Highlights:
--The “nothing” in the above quote refers to the concept that there are no longer any moral absolutes, nobody is using the words “right” and “wrong” any more. BZ decides that he can’t live in a world like this, but Maria decides to keep playing, to keep looking for the alternative to this, to try and find a way to get back to these moral absolutes. BZ faces the fact that he doesn’t care about anything anymore by killing himself, but Maria faces it by realizing that she should care, and she needs to keep looking for a way back to a place where she can care.
--Living in a world without moral absolutes, it can be difficult to have any sense of one's own identity. This is a book about trying to find your identity, anywhere that you think you could find it, whether it be through popular culture such as films and art or through romantic relationships or familial relationships.
--This book doesn't sugar coat any of the tough issues it deals with; it simply lays things out as they happened, without any censorship or embellishment. In that way, Didion owes much stylistically to the works of Hemingway.
--My affinity for this book is in large part due to its unique style of spare, bitter, dark prose. It's like nothing else I've ever read, beautiful in its own way (despite presenting a picture of the world that is utterly bleak and disturbing).
I like the point you made about how it is hard to find self definition in a world devoid of morals. I think this stems from the fact that people tend to define themselves by their actions, i.e. what they do, and if there is no reasoning behind what you do it becomes difficult to say who you are.
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