Play It As It Lays

Didion writes Play It as It Lays in short, snappy chapters, sometimes only consisting of a few lines. How does the writing style fit the novel’s subject matter? How would a different writing style have changed the narrative?

Most of Play It as It Lays is told as a flashback, which Maria relates while she is institutionalized in a mental hospital. Given this context, can we consider Maria a reliable narrator? How does our judgment of Maria’s (un)reliability effect our understanding of the text?

There are many symbols and motifs in the novel that signify danger, but the hummingbird that appears toward the beginning and end of the narrative has a different connotation. Track the development of this image and discuss its significance.

Carter is an acclaimed film director, and in Chapter 53, Maria watches him discuss “the auteur principle” of filmmaking in an interview (138). What is the auteur principle, and why was it significant to Hollywood filmmaking in the 1970s?

In Chapter 44, Maria receives a letter from a hypnotist saying that her worries began when she was a baby in her mother’s womb. How does this statement tie into the novel’s themes of pregnancy, birth, and abortion, and what might it mean to Maria in her search for answers?

The Gay Rights Movement began with the Stonewall riots in 1969, but in 1970, the American Psychiatric Association still listed homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder, and homosexuality was still criminalized in the United States. How do these realities affect BZ, the novel’s only gay character? How do themes of gender and sexuality in the novel overlap?

Play It as It Lays paints a harsh picture of Hollywood and celebrity culture in 1970. Is Didion condemning this culture, or does it simply provide the setting for the novel?

In Chapter 22, a nurse tells Maria that her daughter Kate is being treated with methylphenidate hydrochloride. What clue might this give as to Kate’s medical condition, which is never specified? How might Kate’s condition have been treated, and what kind of life might she have been able to have with her mother, if this story had taken place in the present day?