Krist captures Los Angeles in the period between 1900 and 1930, when an agricultural town of 100,000 people became a burgeoning city of 1.2 million, replete with new industries, a new identity and, crucially, newfound water, in spite of the fact that this was “no sensible place to build a great city.” He directs our attention to three individuals whose restlessness and ambition exemplified the city’s transformation: the engineer and water czar William Mulholland, the filmmaker D. W. Griffith and the Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. They were outsiders who sought their fortunes in LA and whose stars burned bright before they flamed out.
In Krist’s account water came first, brought from the Owens River, north of the city, via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, an enormous public works project completed in 1913. The aqueduct’s 233-mile path also forms the narrative spine of his book. Los Angeles could finally feel confident that the greatest obstacle to its growth had been removed. A decade later, the growing city started pumping groundwater from the Owens Valley, whose resentful residents retaliated, on occasion, with dynamite. By July 1927 the aqueduct had been bombed no fewer than 10 times. Nineteen twenty-seven was also the first year in more than a decade that David Wark Griffith hadn’t released one of his grandiose films. Having achieved spectacular success with The Birth of a Nation(1915), Griffith struggled to keep up with changing tastes and the advent of the talkies. Krist expertly weaves together the stories of Griffith, Mulholland and McPherson, the charismatic evangelist from rural Canada who moved to Los Angeles to attend to the city’s spiritual needs. McPherson’s congregation bloomed with the city, and after surviving a (possible) kidnapping, her ultimate downfall, when it happened, came tragically and too soon.
But above all Krist is a nimble scene-setter, and it’s the indelible details he offers that give The Mirage Factory its mesmerizing pull. You will finish reading The Mirage Factory entertained, informed and satisfied.
