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Tuesday , December 14, 2010
Last Night I Started Reading Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays for the Millionth Time
(L: not the cover on my copy of the book. R: poster for the movie, which I'll probably never see.)
"Once she was on the freeway and had maneuvered her way to a fast lane she turned on the radio at high volume and she drove. She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura. She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions, and just as a riverman feels the pull of the rapids in the lull between sleeping and waking, so Maria lay at night in the still of Beverly Hills and saw the great signs soar overhead at seventy miles an hour. Normandie 1/4 Vermont 3/4 Harbor Fwy I. Again and again she returned to an intricate stretch just south of the interchange where successful passage from the Hollywood onto the Harbor required a diagonal move across four lanes of traffic. On the afternoon she finally did it without once braking or once losing the beat on the radio she was exhilarated, and that night slept dreamlessly."
I've never been able to do that.
Tags: books, cars, Joan Didion, Los Angeles
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2 Comments!!
oh I love that book so, so, much. and I actually have the version with that cover, although it is falling apart from being re-read so many times
By katharine on September 1, 2010 1:42 PM
I'm a big fan of this book too. I always wonder how much of the going crazy part is autobiographical. Also, I was shopping and found it with a new, sexed-up cover: http://www.amazon.com/Play-As-Lays-Joan-Didion/dp/0374529949
By JRo on September 4, 2010 12:47 AM