CANR
WORK TITLE: The Mirage Factory
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Krist, Gary Michael
BIRTHDATE: 5/23/1957
WEBSITE: http://garykristauthor.com/
CITY: Bethesda
STATE: MD
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 290
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/220744/empire-of-sin-by-gary-krist
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May 23, 1957, in Jersey City, NJ; son of Harold Charles and Winifred Joyce Krist; married Elizabeth Yen-Tsen Cheng (a photo editor), October 2, 1983; children: Anna Chang-Yi.
EDUCATION:Princeton University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1979; attended University of Konstanz, West Germany, 1979-80.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Writer-in-residence at Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY, 1985; Advisory editor, Hudson Review, New York, NY, 1990—. Bennett Awards in Literature judge; Fulbright scholar, 1979-80; National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellow, 1989; New Jersey Council for the Arts fellow.
MEMBER:National Book Critics Circle, PEN.
AWARDS:Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1989, for The Garden State; Stephen Crane Award, 2000; Lowell Thomas Gold Medal, for travel journalism; one of the ten best books of the year citation, Washington Post, 2014, for Empire of Sin: A Storm of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Men Seeking Women, Writers’ Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories. Contributor of articles and reviews to publications, including the Washington Post, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, New York Times Book Review, and National Geographic Traveler.
SIDELIGHTS
Gary Krist, author of novels, novellas, and short stories, first considered becoming a writer when he was in high school. The desire persisted through college, but found little expression until his year as a Fulbright scholar in West Germany. While abroad, he traveled and penned short stories rather than studying literary criticism. After returning to the United States and marrying his college sweetheart, he went to New York City where he wrote standardized tests as a logic coordinator. Not until the 1980s did he become serious about his fiction writing.
In his first short story collection, The Garden State, so titled because all the stories are set in New Jersey, Krist challenges the carefully structured world of his characters in an attempt to broaden their view of reality. In “Layover,” a woman is stranded in an airport with her father, with whom she has not been alone for fifteen years. Despite learning that he was unfaithful to his former and his present wives, she gains a new, more complex understanding of him. In “Tribes of Northern New Jersey,” a teenager finds himself forced to choose between his father and his mother’s second husband, an immigrant auto mechanic. Krist’s collection of eight stories earned many positive reviews from critics. “Krist succeeds remarkably in demonstrating that where there is life there is art,” wrote Los Angeles Times reviewer Richard Eder. Elizabeth Gleick, in the New York Times Book Review, commended Krist’s ability to establish confrontational situations and depict moments of insight “with such attention to detail and with such obvious affection for his characters that we get momentarily caught up in new, somewhat absurdist worlds.”
While continuing his job in educational book publishing on a part-time basis, reviewing books, and writing travel articles, Krist worked on his second book, Bone by Bone. Michael Trussler commented in Studies in Short Fiction that the book “offers the short story enthusiast a special delight … Krist’s eye for the nuanced detail underscores one of the pleasures of reading contemporary writing; such fiction sometimes reminds us of how it is that we actually live. … In effect, Krist develops a realism of the uncanny; what we recognize in the book places us both closer to and further from our memories of ourselves.”
When Krist’s wife began working for National Geographic in 1994, the couple moved to Washington, DC, and Krist decided to switch genres. His third and fourth books, Bad Chemistry and Chaos Theory, are thrillers that received numerous positive reviews. In the first book, Krist revisits the theme of suburban desperation that runs through his two earlier collections. The protagonist, Kate Theodorus-Baker, is an ex-cop from Chicago who marries an affluent ex-hippie, and lives and works in Washington, DC, as a social worker. All seems well with her secure, suburban lifestyle until her husband goes missing after a falling out with his business partner, who turns up dead. Kate falls back on her policing expertise and finds herself embroiled in the deadly world of designer drugs. “The mystery will be revealed, and at its heart will lie the basest of human motives: greed,” a reviewer wrote on the Curled Up with A Good Book website, commenting that Krist “provides a neat twist at the end that sets the story just enough above others of its ilk.” Clay Reynolds wrote for the Houston Chronicle: “In his first novelistic effort, this accomplished short-story writer shows how easy it is for a competent storyteller to dip his virtual pen into the inkwell of category fiction and complete all the requirements of the form.” According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Krist “turns in a handsomely crafted, character-driven thriller … Unexpected twists, violent confrontations and modest suspense ensue.” Alec Foege commented in People that Krist “weaves a strand of hip, trenchant social commentary—and thus a cleverly entertaining element—into what is essentially a tried-and-true formula.”
Chaos Theory finds two affluent classmates, one white and one black, venturing into a seedy neighborhood in Washington, DC, in search of drugs, only to become suspects in the murder of an undercover cop. “Krist turns in a little romance and some well-intentioned perspectives on angst-ridden teen-parent relationships,” wrote Stephanie Zvirin for Booklist. A critic for Publishers Weekly commented: “Spinning a plausible situation into an extraordinary story while training a marksman’s eye on character, Krist has conceived a sleek and thoughtful thriller.” And, while Jonathan Miles commented in his review for Salon.com that “Krist’s efforts are too often betrayed by sentences that fall thuddingly flat,” he concluded: “But then, with sentences flying by so quickly in a plot-throttled blur, you don’t especially care—it’s a thriller and it’s thrilling, a rocketing and relentless literary carnival ride.”
In Extravagance, Krist offers a unique narrative structure by placing his protagonist, Will Merrick, in the 1690s and the 1990s. Merrick in both eras is trying to capitalize on the respective markets so he can achieve wealth and security. The tale begins in seventeenth-century London where Merrick steps into a hackney coach on Change Alley and the coach suddenly becomes a New York taxi on twentieth-century Wall Street. For a romantic twist, Merrick’s love interest in both times is also the same woman. In this morality tale of greed and betrayal, Krist successfully weaves Merrick between the centuries and “provides the reader with a painless lesson that entertains as well as informs,” commented Rebecca Stuhr in Library Journal. In Kirkus Reviews, a critic wrote that Extravagance “reminds us that there have been other New Economies as [Krist] blends his ambitious hero’s adventures in 1690s London with similar events in New York from September 1999 to March 2000.” Another critic wrote in Publishers Weekly that the London portion of the book “fades” as the story progresses, and that Merrick’s love affair with a wealthy and strong-willed woman who wants to be a restaurateur is “competent but rarely compelling.” The reviewer continued, however, that “Krist’s ambition is laudable, and the novel is a worthwhile read.”
Krist turns his attention to nonfiction with The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche. With this book, Krist tells the story of the 1910 snowstorm that stranded two trainloads of passengers high in the Cascade Mountains, and of the dreadful avalanche that swept trains and passengers alike from their tenuous perch on the side of the mountain. Krist fills in the background of the story and the Great Northern Railroad, describing the dubious wisdom of building a railroad line in such potentially treacherous surroundings. He tells of how the trains were stranded by the snowstorm, how rescue crews worked tirelessly to clear the tracks and rescue the passengers, and how time and the elements both contributed to the disaster.
Krist profiles significant personalities involved in the catastrophe, including James H. O’Neill, the thoroughly experienced railroad superintendent who authorized the train’s passage into the snowy mountains, but who also worked tirelessly in the attempt to rescue the trapped travelers. The author also delves into archives of letters, court testimony, diaries, and other primary source materials to present character profiles of many of the trains’ passengers and of railroad workers who struggled to save them. In all, almost one hundred people died in the disaster, almost two-thirds of them railroad employees, with the last body being recovered more than five months after the avalanche. Throughout the book, Krist “holds our interest … with thorough reporting and easy, readable prose,” commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. “The end product” of Krist’s research and writing “is a stunning piece of literary journalism,” remarked Kathi Kube in Trains magazine. Booklist contributor George Cohen called Krist’s work “an astonishingly rich chronicle of this catastrophe.”
In 2012 Krist published City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. The account looks at a period of twelve days in Chicago during the summer of 1919, where a series of disasters stretched local society to the point of civic disintegration. Krist covers everything from the explosion of an experimental Goodyear blimp over downtown to rioting and a transit strike. Booklist contributor Jay Freeman lauded that “this is a superior slice of urban history.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly pointed out that “Krist serves up a solid, well-informed, and vibrant slice of urban history.”
Krist published Empire of Sin: A Storm of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans in 2014. The account looks at the numerous rises and falls of New Orleans, paying particular attention to the notorious Storyville area of the city from 1890 to 1920. Krist covers a range of topics, including the birth of jazz, the abundant sex trade, and infamous serial killers.
Writing in the London Independent, John Clarke opined that “it’s a fascinating and colourful saga that, in the skilful hands of Krist, reads almost like a E.L. Doctorow novel and invites us all to take a trip ‘way down yonder’.” In a review in Chicago Tribune Books, Lynell George explained that “Krist’s expansive exploration of the decades long battle for New Orleans’ soul in the end celebrates New Orleans’ character, its essence: the city’s long history of defiance and resilience; its ability to pivot in the midst of disaster. Empire of Sin isn’t simply the story of how New Orleans came to be, but rather how New Orleans came to learn to fight.” Reviewing the book in the Washington Post Book World, Kevin Allman claimed that “Krist’s Empire of Sin is certainly one of the most well-researched and well-written, a true-life tale of a sui generis American city that reads like a historical thriller.”
Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Walter Isaacson remarked that “the most interesting aspect of Krist’s book is the battle between upright uptown reformers, who wished to rid New Orleans of sin and corruption, and downtown denizens, who relished the town’s permissive mores. With our 21st-century sensibilities, we’re expected to be appalled by the degradation and exploitation of the women of Storyville. But by the end of the book most readers will be cheering for Anderson over what Krist calls the ‘highly sanctimonious’ temperance advocates and ‘self-styled champions of virtue.’” In a review in Library Journal, Nicholas Graham found Empire of Sin to be an “engaging work” and “highly recommended for readers interested in New Orleans.”
In The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles, Krist turns his focus to the history of the city of Los Angeles. He highlights three individuals important to the city’s development: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith, and Aimee Semple McPherson. Mulholland, an engineer, helped to develop the look of the city, Griffith was instrumental in creating its film industry, and McPherson was the first of many spiritual leaders to base themselves there.
Critics offered favorable assessments of The Mirage Factory. A writer on the Publishers Weekly website commented: “Krist serves up intricate stories, rich period atmosphere, and colorful personalities to capture the zeitgeist of this eventful period.” Tony Mostrom, contributor to the LA Weekly website, suggested: “The Mirage Factory is great not only for the wealth of obscure facts Krist manages to weave into his tale of his three larger-than-life figures but also for the evocative word pictures of old Los Angeles and Hollywood he conjures up.” Mostrom added: “The Mirage Factory is a colorful, enjoyable read, especially in its evocation of early, urban Los Angeles.” Reviewing the volume on the New York Times Book Review website, Jennifer Szalai remarked: “Krist’s efforts to curb the sprawl sound pat, but they work. And as self-contained as it is, the book opens up vistas to other books. For anyone uninitiated to what the historian Kevin Starr called ‘the Great Gatsby of American cities,’ The Mirage Factory reads like a well-curated sampler. You’ll finish it entertained, informed and satisfied, as well as ready for more.” “His dramatic portrayals of politics, scandals, sabotage, and bombings make for a rich, rewarding read,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews critic. The same critic described the book as “an entertaining, intertwined tale of triumph, hubris, and Manifest Destiny in the city of angels.”
Krist once told CA: “My work so far has been essentially comic. The comedy stems from the characters’ attempts to engage a world that refuses to be controlled or even understood. I hope it’s a serious kind of comedy.
“I think that literary fiction should be, on one level or another, subversive. Good books exist to question the status quo—to undermine complacency, received wisdom, and the easy moral stance. But I don’t think you can subvert anything if you simply alienate your reader, which is why I tend not to write overly experimental, inaccessible fiction. I’m a great believer in using plot and character to involve a reader, so that the subversion can happen—subtly—while nobody’s looking.
“My work since The Garden State has taken several different directions. Bone by Bone was another story collection, but generally a darker, less sanguine book, reflecting my own sharper sense of the moral and physical peril at large in the world. In my novels ( Bad Chemistry and Chaos Theory ) I’ve tried to bring the same literary sensibility to a more popular genre. Both books are thrillers, though I’d like to think that they’re thrillers with a lot on their minds.
“No matter what or how I write, though, I find that the same basic concerns keep worming their way into my work—in particular, my fascination with the questions of why it is so difficult for ordinary Americans to contrive happy, meaningful, ethical lives, even though we live in history’s most prosperous society, sheltered from most of the world’s worst atrocities.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 1994, Alice Joyce, review of Bone by Bone, p. 994; December 15, 1997, Eric Robbins, review of Bad Chemistry, p. 683; October 11, 1999, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Chaos Theory, p. 51; November 15, 2006, George Cohen, review of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche, p. 20; March 15, 2012, Jay Freeman, review of City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, p. 15; September 1, 2014, Eloise Kinney, review of Empire of Sin: A Storm of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans, p. 30.
Economist, August 31, 2002, review of Extravagance.
Entertainment Weekly, February 16, 2007, Tina Jordan, review of The White Cascade, p. 82.
Houston Chronicle, March 1, 1998, Clay Reynolds, review of Bad Chemistry, p. 27.
Independent (London, England), December 18 2014, John Clarke, review of Empire of Sin.
Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2002, review of Extravagance, p. 982; December 15, 2006, review of The White Cascade, p. 1258; August 1, 2014, review of Empire of Sin; April 1, 2018, review of The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles.
Library Journal, October 1, 1999, Lawrence Rungren, review of Chaos Theory, p. 134; August, 2002, Rebecca Stuhr, review of Extravagance, p. 143; March 1, 2007, Lawrence Maxted, review of The White Cascade, p. 95; October 1, 2014, Nicholas Graham, review of Empire of Sin, p. 96.
Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1988, Richard Eder, review of The Garden State.
News Tribune (Tacoma, WA), May 9, 2007, “White Cascade Details Drama of Deadly 1910 Railroad Disaster,” review of The White Cascade.
New York Times Book Review, November 6, 1988, Elizabeth Gleick, review of The Garden State; November 6, 2014, Walter Isaacson, review of Empire of Sin, p. 15.
People, February 2, 1998, Alec Foege, review of Bad Chemistry, p. 29.
Ploughshares, fall, 1994, Jessica Treadway, review of Bone by Bone, p. 245.
Publishers Weekly, March 7, 1994, review of Bone by Bone, p. 53; November 17, 1997, review of Bad Chemistry, p. 52; October 11, 1999, review of Chaos Theory, p. 51; July 15, 2002, review of Extravagance, p. 52; November 20, 2006, review of The White Cascade, p. 50; January 23, 2012, review of City of Scoundrels, p. 155; July 7, 2014, review of Empire of Sin, p. 62.
Studies in Short Fiction, spring, 1996, Michael Trussler, review of Bone by Bone, p. 284.
Trains, April 1, 2007, Kathi Kube, review of The White Cascade, p. 72.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 24, 2014, Lynell George, review of Empire of Sin.
Washington Post Book World, October 24, 2014, Kevin Allman, review of Empire of Sin.
ONLINE
Armchair Interviews, http://www.armchairinterviews.com/ (August 18, 2007), Amanda Schafer, review of The White Cascade.
Curled Up with A Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (August 18, 2007), review of Bad Chemistry.
Gary Krist website, http://garykristauthor.com (October 19, 2018).
LA Weekly Online, https://www.laweekly.com/ (May 22, 2018), Tony Mostrom, review of The Mirage Factory.
New York Times Book Review Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (May 23, 2018), Jennifer Szalai, review of The Mirage Factory.
Princeton Alumni Weekly, http://www.princeton.edu/ (April 4, 2007), Justin Nyberg, review of The White Cascade.
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (May 7, 2018), review of The Mirage Factory.
Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/ (October 9, 2002), Jonathan Miles, review of Chaos Theory.
Washington Independent Review of Books, http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/ (December 9, 2014), Michael Causey, author interview.
Washington Post Book World Online, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (May 18, 2018), Joe Mathews, review of The Mirage Factory.
White Cascade website, http://www.whitecascade.com/ (August 18, 2007), author interview.
New York Times bestselling author Gary Krist has written four works of narrative nonfiction--The White Cascade, City of Scoundrels, Empire of Sin, and (his latest) The Mirage Factory, published in May of 2018. He is also the author of five works of fiction. He has been a regular book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post. His stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, Esquire, Best American Mystery Stories, and on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, The Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and other awards.
Gary Krist (writer)
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Gary Krist
Gary Krist 5190141.jpg
Born 1957
Jersey City, New Jersey
Nationality American
Genre novels
Gary Michael Krist (born 1957) is an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, travel journalism, and literary criticism. Before turning to narrative nonfiction with The White Cascade (2007), a book about the 1910 Wellington avalanche, City of Scoundrels (2012), about Chicago's tragic summer of 1919, and Empire of Sin (2014), about the reform wars in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, Krist wrote three novels--Bad Chemistry (1998), Chaos Theory (2000), and Extravagance (2002). He has also written two short story collections--The Garden State (1988) and Bone by Bone (1994). His latest book is The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles (2018).
Contents
1 Career
2 Life
3 Bibliography
4 External links
Career
He has been a frequent book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post Book World. His satire pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Outlook section, and Newsday, and his stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, and Esquire, and on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts. His short stories have also been anthologized in such collections as Men Seeking Women, Writers' Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories.
He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. "Empire of Sin" was named one of the top ten books of 2014 by The Washington Post and Library Journal.
Life
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Krist is a graduate of Princeton University. In 1979–80, he studied literature at the Universitaet Konstanz (Germany) on a Fulbright Scholarship. The author has been profiled in The New York Times Book Review (November 6, 1988) and the Style section of The Washington Post (February 25, 2007).
Krist lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.
Bibliography
Novels and story collections
The Garden State New York : Vintage Books, 1988. ISBN 9780679725152, OCLC 19920702
Bone by Bone New York Harcourt Brace, 1994. ISBN 9780151820641, OCLC 832166232
Bad Chemistry New York: Random House, 1998. ISBN 9780679449317, OCLC 228438897
Chaos Theory New York : Jove Books, 2001. ISBN 9780515130850, OCLC 46321399
Extravagance New York : Broadway Books, 2002. ISBN 9780767913317, OCLC 53075282
Nonfiction
The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007. ISBN 9780805083293, OCLC 150384796
City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster that Gave Birth to Modern Chicago New York: Broadway Books, 2012. ISBN 9780307454300, OCLC 801926578
Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans New York: Broadway Books, 2014. OCLC 951367121
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles New York: Crown Publishers, 2018. ISBN 9780451496386, OCLC 1037895213
GARY KRIST has written for the New York Times, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post Book World, and elsewhere. He is the author of the bestselling Empire of Sin and City of Scoundrels, as well as the acclaimed The White Cascade. He has also written five works of fiction. Krist has been the recipient of the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and other awards.
QUOTED: "His dramatic portrayals of politics, scandals, sabotage, and bombings make for a rich, rewarding read."
"an entertaining, intertwined tale of triumph, hubris, and Manifest Destiny in the city of angels."
Krist, Gary: THE MIRAGE FACTORY
Kirkus Reviews. (Apr. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Krist, Gary THE MIRAGE FACTORY Crown (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 5, 15 ISBN: 978-0-451-49638-6
The birth of modern-day Los Angeles viewed through the prism of three of its most ardent advocates.
Krist carries forward the methodology he employed in his masterful portraits of Chicago (City of Scoundrels, 2012) and New Orleans (Empire of Sin, 2014), here applying his skills to LA, "the grand metropolis that never should have been." The fact that the sprawling megalopolis even exists today is something of a small miracle, partly made possible by the early visionaries that championed the city's dreams. As the author notes, rightly, "it was no sensible place to build a great city," offering "few of the inducements to settlement and growth found near major cities in other places." Darting between a macro and micro viewpoint, the author maintains his sharp focus on three primary subjects. The man with the plan was fabled engineer William Mulholland, whose infamous aqueduct and regional dams brought vital water to the city. The one with the dreams was D.W. Griffith, the frustrated actor who became a successful director and producer and transformed the movies from a novelty to a revolutionary medium. Finally, the true believer was Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal evangelist who used her celebrity to enrapture the troubled souls of LA. Through these three actors, Krist effectively demonstrates the massive opportunities the city represented in the early days of the 20th century as well as the personal tragedies that ultimately brought these dreamers low. Although the author unearths little that is historically groundbreaking, his dramatic portrayals of politics, scandals, sabotage, and bombings make for a rich, rewarding read. He also generates enormous sympathy for these flawed futurists, portraying not only the heights they reached in their respective careers, but also their radical falls from grace. Their fates ranged from an accidental demise to an unforgivable tragedy to that most acute of Hollywood endings: irrelevance.
An entertaining, intertwined tale of triumph, hubris, and Manifest Destiny in the city of angels.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Krist, Gary: THE MIRAGE FACTORY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700343/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6e3b35d8. Accessed 5 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700343
QUOTED: "Krist’s efforts to curb the sprawl sound pat, but they work. And as self-contained as it is, the book opens up vistas to other books. For anyone uninitiated to what the historian Kevin Starr called 'the Great Gatsby of American cities,' The Mirage Factory reads like a well-curated sampler. You’ll finish it entertained, informed and satisfied, as well as ready for more."
In ‘The Mirage Factory,’ a Thriving Los Angeles Born From Humble Beginnings
By Jennifer Szalai
May 23, 2018
3
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CreditCreditAlessandra Montalto/The New York Times
With big dreams come rude awakenings, and the dreams that built a thriving metropolis in a remote corner of Southern California were bigger than most. Los Angeles was once a sparsely settled hinterland, isolated by desert and mountains, constrained by the trickling water supply of the Los Angeles River. As Gary Krist gently puts it in his new book, “It was no sensible place to build a great city.”
Anyone even casually acquainted with Los Angeles has probably heard a version of that sentiment before. But then “The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles” doesn’t pretend to overhaul our understanding with cutting-edge theories or historical bombshells. Krist, who wrote novels before turning to popular histories of Chicago (“City of Scoundrels”) and New Orleans (“Empire of Sin”), marshals his considerable storytelling skills to capture Los Angeles at a critical moment: 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.
But even 30 years of upheaval can get unwieldy, so Krist winnows the historical record even further. He directs our attention to three individuals whose restlessness and ambition bolstered — and exemplified — the city’s transformation: the engineer and water czar William Mulholland, the filmmaker D. W. Griffith and the Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Three people over three decades: They were outsiders who sought their fortunes in Los Angeles, and whose stars burned bright before they flamed out.
Krist’s efforts to curb the sprawl sound pat, but they work. And as self-contained as it is, the book opens up vistas to other books. For anyone uninitiated to what the historian Kevin Starr called “the Great Gatsby of American cities,” “The Mirage Factory” reads like a well-curated sampler. You’ll finish it entertained, informed and satisfied, as well as ready for more.
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In Krist’s account, as in life, water comes first. Joan Didion, living in Los Angeles, once described revering the water she drew from her faucet so much that she kept tabs on where it was: “I particularly like to imagine it as it cascades down the 45-degree stone steps that aerate Owens water after its airless passage through the mountain pipes and siphons.”
What Didion called “Owens water” was brought from the Owens River, north of the city, to her Malibu home by the Los Angeles Aqueduct, an enormous public works project. The aqueduct’s 233-mile path also forms the narrative spine of Krist’s book. Completed in 1913, with Mulholland as its chief engineer, it opened flood gates both literal and figurative. At the opening ceremony, as a deluge of water came gushing down onto the dusty spillway below, Mulholland told the gathered crowd what to do with it and the future it represented: “There it is. Take it!”
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Gary Krist
CreditBob Krist
“Los Angeles could finally feel confident that the greatest obstacle to its growth had been removed,” Krist writes, even if the exuberance would only last as long as the respite before the next drought. A decade later, the growing city started pumping groundwater from the Owens Valley, whose resentful residents retaliated with angry editorials and, on occasion, dynamite. “By mid-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 critical and commercial success with “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), his racist paean to the South — described by James Baldwin as “one of the great classics of the American cinema” and “an elaborate justification of mass murder” — Griffith struggled to keep up with changing tastes and the advent of the talkies. The Hollywood he helped create had changed: There was more money churning through, along with more scrutiny from the money men.
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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. She shows up in “The Mirage Factory” almost halfway through — arriving at the tail end of 1918 with her mother, her female assistant and her two children in tow. McPherson’s congregation bloomed with the city, and after surviving a (possible) kidnapping and multiple fallouts with her mother, her ultimate downfall, when it happened, came tragically and too soon.
Deploying chapters that alternate between the three characters to build momentum and suspense, Krist inserts some social commentary here and there, but he keeps it minimal and to the point. Los Angeles’s boosters, he says, were peddling “the wealthy white man’s version of the ideal city,” a place “without losers — at least among those the establishment cared about.”
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. Recounting the collapse of the St. Francis dam in 1928, a disaster that would mar Mulholland’s legacy, Krist describes the first moments of horror with terrifying immediacy. One survivor saw the “seething wall of water as high as a 10-story building” before it crashed around him, “tearing the clothes from his body and battering his head and limbs with stone and wood.”
Even the parenthetical asides are filled with well-chosen arcana: The actress Louise Brooks said that dancing with Fatty Arbuckle was “like floating in the arms of a huge donut”; the director Cecil B. DeMille ventured into talkies with “Madam Satan,” a “blimp disaster musical.”
McPherson and the other transplants who flourished in Los Angeles, at least for a time, “understood that an appealing story can accomplish so much more than the plain, unvarnished facts.” Krist understands this, too. In the last pages of “The Mirage Factory,” he can’t resist a few telescoping shots into the future, like those scenes elaborating on the fates of a movie’s characters as the credits roll. It’s an ending that feels right, allowing us to linger a while longer before the house lights come on.
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The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles
By Gary Krist
Illustrated. 402 pages. Crown. $27.
Three monstrous — yet human — figures who created early Los Angeles
Los Angeles at the turn of the 20th century. The city’s growth into a major metropolis came as a surprise to many. (Detroit Photographic Co./Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
By Joe Mathews
May 18
In 1868, the American political economist Henry George had an essay published in the Overland Monthly that would be required reading in California schools for the next century. In it, he predicted the most glorious future for the Golden State. San Diego would become an economic power. Oakland’s port would match that of Jersey City, “if not of Liverpool.” And San Francisco would emerge as the Western Hemisphere’s de facto capital, without a rival “for a thousand miles north and south.”
That last line reflected the essay’s greatest failure: He didn’t once mention Los Angeles. Of course, L.A. was a small, agricultural place then. Why would it ever be important?
Such early failures of imagination have scarred the reputation of the City of Angels to this day. Because L.A. was not expected to be anything, it became easy for writers, thinkers and even Hollywood’s self-hating filmmakers to frame the city’s 20th-century growth into a global mega-region as an error, a crime, even a change contrary to the laws of nature.
Most Angelenos don’t think much about these attacks — they’re too busy getting to work. But some more historically sensitive souls, including yours truly, so resent having our very existence questioned that we tend to lash out in response. For example, here’s a question to readers of The Washington Post: If building L.A. was such a crime against man and nature, what then should we call the use of slaves to construct a national capital on a swamp alongside the Potomac?
So you’ll understand why I was prepared to hate Gary Krist’s new book, “The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles,” as yet another addition to the maddening genre of L.A. as, in the words of the accompanying publicity, a “metropolis that never should have been.” Since turnabout is fair play, my plan was to challenge the tome’s very existence.
But then I read it. And I have to give this Krist dude credit. His book reminded me of the stolen rug that drives the plot of the Coen brothers’ L.A. caper, “ The Big Lebowski”: “The Mirage Factory” really ties the place together.
(Crown)
Of course, the history here will be familiar to any student of California. And Krist’s method — telling the story of a time (1900 to 1930 in this case) and a place (the entertainment capital of the world) via three big characters — is as hoary a convention as ending a movie with a wedding and a sunset.
But Krist is so skilled a storyteller that none of that matters. He builds a narrative around three great figures of early-20th-century L.A.: the ambitious and self-taught engineer William Mulholland, who brought water to the city; the transformational filmmaker D.W. Griffith, who helped birth its signature industry; and the charismatic evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who, in founding a religion, helped make L.A. a center for producing new faiths.
As a writer, Krist is a dream-weaver. These figures, though contemporaries, had nothing to do with one another’s worlds — yet he links them without forcing the issue. Instead, exquisite pacing and seamless shifting between the characters allow their stories to connect, without Krist ever having to connect them.
All three figures have monstrous qualities, but Krist emphasizes their humanity and the way their mistakes grew out of conflicts with their opponents. Mulholland had an ally turned enemy, L.A. Mayor Frederick Eaton; Griffith had his movies’ financiers; and the heaven-sent McPherson had one hell of a mother.
Krist expertly gets at something here that goes far beyond Los Angeles — that the creation of a great civilization is not about success but about failure. Pile up enough spectacular failures on top of each other, enough failed water projects and failed pictures and failed churches, and you might have something as great as Southern California.
The sections of the book about Griffith and McPherson can feel a bit thin at times. This book’s heart is with Mulholland and the story of how L.A. drained the Owens Valley of its water. I’ve read dozens of histories of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and none are as viscerally compelling or as clear in detailed descriptions of the complicated machinations as Krist’s account.
Indeed, Krist is so good I found myself wishing that he hadn’t chosen such familiar territory for this book. The 21st century has produced several other excellent books about early-20th-century L.A.: Richard Rayner’s “A Bright and Guilty Place,” about a 1931 murder; John Buntin’s “L.A. Noir,” about the rivalry of mobster Mickey Cohen and LAPD Chief William Parker; and Howard Blum’s “American Lightning,” which also uses Griffith as one of three big characters in a story built around the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times.
Of course, there is a dark side to all these great books. They keep getting published not because people care about L.A. but because they are about Hollywood, sex and violence. It also helps that the main characters are white.
In this, “The Mirage Factory” reflects a Trumpian nostalgia that has infected even our sanctuary city. In the 21st century, as L.A. becomes a whiter place (because of declining immigration and high housing prices), its still mostly white elites — especially its media, intelligentsia and environmentalists — have developed a real fetish for the smaller and whiter L.A. of the early 20th century, which they portray as a more livable place.
In so doing, they have made the history Krist covers far too important. The truth is that today’s Los Angeles was built not by Mulholland or Griffith in the 1920s but by a far more diverse array of characters in the 1980s and 1990s. Chief among them was Tom Bradley, an African American UCLA grad and cop who, despite dramatic mistakes and personal flaws, made Los Angeles a truly international city during 20 years as mayor. That Bradley has never been the subject of a major biography by a writer of Krist’s caliber is the real crime against nature.
Of course, it reeks of hypocrisy for any Angeleno, including me, to complain about endless sequels. And Krist’s book is so good that, like the best movies, it ends up inverting the genre. In his telling, people around the world came to L.A. because they desperately needed a great city with perfect weather, space to make bigger pictures and unmoored souls who were open to seeing God in new ways.
By the end, a world without Los Angeles seems unimaginable.
THE MIRAGE FACTORY
Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles
By Gary Krist
Crown. 402 pp. $27
QUOTED: "The Mirage Factory is great not only for the wealth of obscure facts Krist manages to weave into his tale of his three larger-than-life figures but also for the evocative word pictures of old Los Angeles and Hollywood he conjures up."
"The Mirage Factory is a colorful, enjoyable read, especially in its evocation of early, urban Los Angeles."
The Mirage Factory: Tales of Magic, Movies and Mayhem in Early L.A.
TONY MOSTROM | MAY 22, 2018 | 6:52PM
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Those who write about the sprawling history of Los Angeles have, it would seem, almost too much to choose from, to sort out and to leave out. One recent online piece in Curbed L.A.’s “Los Angeles History 101” got hammered by some of its readers for ignoring the historic influence of the aerospace industry in Southern California, while focusing instead on classic tourist tidbits like the Hollywood Sign. But since it can feel overwhelming to write about Los Angeles, a good rule of thumb is: Don’t spread yourself too thin; focus in on something good and sexy; and for God’s sake don’t cover ground that’s already been done to death.
New York Times best-selling author and biographer-of-cities Gary Krist (Empire of Sin, City of Scoundrels) has chosen a good, focused biographical approach in his new book, The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles, released today by Penguin Random House, which looks at early–20th century L.A. (circa 1900 to 1930) through the life stories of three hugely influential individuals: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith and Aimee Semple McPherson.
William Mulholland is the audacious Los Angeles Water Company engineer and “water czar” who made our lives on this once-parched piece of land possible. Controversial film director D.W. Griffith is widely credited with creating the first great Hollywood movies. And huckster-evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson's self-created theology, the “Four-Square Gospel,” lives on today, despite the scandals of her life during the dizzy, jazzy 1920s.
New York Times best-selling author Gary Krist has chosen a focused biographical approach to early L.A. in his new book, The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles.
New York Times best-selling author Gary Krist has chosen a focused biographical approach to early L.A. in his new book, The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles.Gary Krist
While these still-consequential figures are well known to California history enthusiasts (and to a no doubt diminishing sliver of the public), Krist prides himself, as any good historian does, on digging into the archives and uncovering long-lost details of his subjects’ lives. With this book, Krist has succeeded in creating a colorful and fresh narrative of L.A. history, while avoiding a mere retread of their stories.
The phrase “warts and all” comes easily to mind when you think of this trio of early Southern California powerhouses: Mulholland, Griffith and McPherson were controversial in their day, and remain so. All were giants in their field who would eventually suffer an equally giant fall from grace after their best work had been accomplished, none so painfully, as it would turn out, as Mulholland.
Here was a lad who’d emigrated from Ireland to dusty little Los Angeles back in 1877, unschooled and broke at 22. But he was a brilliant autodidact, reading books at night on engineering and gradually making his way to the top of the corporate ladder at the old Los Angeles Water Company (this was back in the days when the downtown area was relying largely on the L.A. River for its water).
To his everlasting but controversial glory, LAWC Superintendent Mulholland cast his gaze, in 1904, upon a remote body of water way up north, the Owens River, then carried out an audacious plan to construct a 419-mile-long aqueduct, like some gigantic metallic drinking straw, bringing that abundant water all the way down from there to here.
The water began flowing to L.A. in 1913. It was a full-on, successful water grab, one that slowly destroyed the bucolic lifestyle of the people living up in the Owens Valley. But let’s face it: Bill’s drinking straw was the reason you and I are able to live and, well, drink here in 2018; the aqueduct sits there to this day flowing along, snaking its way down across fields and deserts, over hill and dale, feeding and bathing us, washing our dishes, filling our pools, watering our stupid lawns. Who wouldn’t agree with the grateful Angelenos of that time, who lovingly called him “Saint Mulholland.” He was clearly a hero for the ages.
D.W. Griffith was arguably the first serious American film artist. In an era of stagey overacting, he encouraged his "players" to play it down, to keep it natural. His use of close-ups and "quick-cut" editing represented a huge leap forward for the art form very early on.
“Although many people were suddenly making movies all over Los Angeles, no one doubted who was the true artist of the form,” Krist writes. Griffith’s best silent features, Broken Blossoms and Intolerance, were hailed as masterpieces, though as Krist points out, they were criticized by some as “not commercial” and “confusing.”
For cineastes today, Griffith’s name elicits both sneers and praise, thanks to the Southern-born film pioneer’s lunk-headed decision to make The Birth of a Nation, an elaborate feature film based on a book that glorified the KKK.
Even then (and in the midst of a truly deplorable resurgence of Klan activity across the country), this was too much for most Americans; both the NAACP and ordinary citizens publicly protested the movie’s cartoon depictions of post–Civil War black folk as marauding criminals and rapists. Despite this, Krist writes, Griffith’s name remained for many years “the first to spring to anyone’s mind when discussing the world’s great directors.” It was a different world.
The Mirage Factory is great not only for the wealth of obscure facts Krist manages to weave into his tale of his three larger-than-life figures but also for the evocative word pictures of old Los Angeles and Hollywood he conjures up. The intensely romantic charm of early L.A. is best on display here in his chapters on Griffith and his milieu. Krist’s account of the director’s earliest years in L.A., making short one-reel films on a shoestring budget (“without even a script”) is fascinating, as both movie history and downtown history:
“Even urban street scenes were easily shot in the Los Angeles of 1910, since the city’s downtown was by now densely built up. Manhattan it wasn’t, but new … Beaux Arts buildings were filling the grid … at a rapid pace … and a number of elegant hotel lobbies … could double as the finest interiors of New York or Boston,” he writes.
“Griffith had rented a downtown loft on Main Street and an open lot at … Grand Avenue and Washington Street. To call the latter a studio would be generous.” Krist quotes actress Mary Pickford: “’Our stage consisted of an acre of ground, fenced in, and a large wooden platform, hung with cotton shades that were pulled on wires overhead. … Dressing rooms being a nonexistent luxury, we donned our costumes every morning at [a] hotel.’”
In The Mirage Factory, Gary Krist looks at early-20th century L.A. through the life stories of three huge influencers: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith and Aimee Semple McPherson.
In The Mirage Factory, Gary Krist looks at early-20th century L.A. through the life stories of three huge influencers: William Mulholland, D.W. Griffith and Aimee Semple McPherson.Penguin Random House
Krist must have enjoyed writing passages like the one that beautifully evokes the "romantic ruins" of old Hollywood, after an outdoor Griffith shoot circa 1920: “Babylon was crumbling. The huge set left over from the filming of Intolerance stood in the empty lot at Sunset and Hollywood boulevards, its ornamented façades and imposing plaster elephants warping and cracking in the hot California sun.”
As for Griffith’s original sin, the grotesque racism of The Birth of a Nation (born of his own 19th-century Southern upbringing), Krist reveals that many who worked with him on the film “had misgivings about the project” from the beginning. A cameraman named Karl Brown called the original story “terribly biased … as bitter a hymn of hate as I had ever encountered.”
But Griffith’s decline and fall was merely artistic. William Mulholland’s killed people. And here Krist, in chronicling the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster that claimed more than 400 lives, is following in the footsteps of two excellent books on that tragedy, Floodpath by Jon Wilkman and Thirsty by Marc Weingarten.
Krist is up to the task, though. His description of the devastation wrought by Mulholland’s failed “back-up” dam project, which caved and collapsed at midnight on March 12, 1928, killing small-town dwellers from San Francisquito Canyon to Fillmore to Santa Paula right near the ocean, is searingly dramatic and, of course, intensely tragic. “It’s a scene of horror,” one witness told Mulholland, who listened “with his head in his hand.” The “Chief” went from public saint to devil overnight.
Of Krist’s trio of antiheroes, Aimee Semple McPherson is the easiest to make fun of … and as he tells it, she was considered a bit of a joke even in her day. There was, of course, the hokey evangelism and showbiz corniness that was her stock in trade for “saving souls” between the two world wars. Krist describes the over-the-top “showmanship” and circuslike atmosphere Sister Aimee supplied her audiences at Angelus Temple, the church she built that still stands today, its rounded façade facing Echo Park Lake. “Sister” was known to roller skate down the center aisle toward the stage from the back of the hall, shouting Bible verses, and that was one of her milder stunts.
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Why include “Sister Aimee” in this book? Krist touts Sister’s importance as a precursor to the Southern Cal propensity for wacky religions and cults, but you have to wonder: Are we still known for that now? The days of televised mega-cathedrals in Orange County are, after all, mostly long gone. For those of us who are allergic to evangelists, this might be the least compelling part of The Mirage Factory,, though Krist’s account of Sister’s “fake kidnapping,” where it appeared she tried to cover-up a month-long getaway with her married boyfriend, by claiming to have been abducted, is fascinating and in parts hilarious.
The Mirage Factory is a colorful, enjoyable read, especially in its evocation of early, urban Los Angeles. My only complaint after finishing the book was: more, please. The narrative breezes along at times a little too swiftly, and I found myself wanting more details on some of the tantalizing facts dropped, like so many tasty bread crumbs, by its author.
One can quibble with Krist’s take on the “origin story” of this city, too. He has cited L.A.’s “initial growth spurt” as occurring within the book’s post-1900 time frame, and while there was a big jump in population then, a lot of people were already here building the city up during the 1880s and 1890s. (For a deeper dig into L.A.’s beginnings, see John Mack Faragher’s 2016 masterwork Eternity Street, which chronicles the for-real, from-the-ground-up nitty-gritty.)
QUOTED: "Krist serves up intricate stories, rich period atmosphere, and colorful personalities to capture the zeitgeist of this eventful period."
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles
Gary Krist. Crown, $27 (432p) ISBN 978-0-451-49638-6
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Krist (Empire of Sin) reveals how a rural backwater was transformed into a verdant multicultural metropolis through ingenuity, chicanery, and hyperbole in this engrossing history of Los Angeles. Focusing on the years 1900 through 1930, Krist draws from historic documents and firsthand accounts to show how the use of new technology in film production and mass media seduced hopeful dreamers westward with inspirational words and promises of unlimited opportunity. He credits three flawed and ambitious visionaries with the city’s meteoric rise: self-taught engineer William Mulholland, who designed the water system that made urbanization possible; film director D.W. Griffith, who overcame meddling film bosses to transform motion pictures into a lucrative industry; and charismatic evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, a pioneering faith healer and radio show host who “founded her own religion and cemented southern California’s reputation as a national hub for seekers of unorthodox spirituality and self-realization.” With a gift for evocative phrasing (“The images they conjured up... all had elements of the swindle about them, like mirages whose heady promises could evaporate on closer inspection”), Krist serves up intricate stories, rich period atmosphere, and colorful personalities to capture the zeitgeist of this eventful period. The result is a rollicking jaunt through L.A.’s early days. (May)
DETAILS
Reviewed on: 05/07/2018
Release date: 05/15/2018