Robert M. Fogelson’s The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930,

a system of political patronage with little accountability, a parachute drag on decision-making. The game of kingdoms meant that difficult issues could go unaddressed for years or even decades. A failing hospital, a homelessness crisis countywide, all while blue-ribbon commissions filed their reports.

2019, some eighty-one thousand people belonged to the Los Angeles branch of the Screen Actors Guild, and roughly seventy-four thousand of them identified as actor-performers, the Guild confirmed.)

Los Angeles probably has no single unifying dream besides the straightforward desire to be loved or not die in an earthquake—or perhaps not feel so alone in the vastness of the immense slouching shapelessness—but if there is one narrative that outsiders pin to the city-state, stocked with clichés but also some essential truths, it is often the

“Los Angeles is perennially refreshing itself with newcomers who have left behind them the pressures for conformity” (Remi Nadeau, Los Angeles: From Mission to Modern City).

As a large-group awareness training program (LGAT), as they were known among psychologists, Lifespring had offered a five-day “Basic” training followed by an “Advanced” class, followed by a “Leadership” program, all part of a self-help curriculum.

Northridge, the city-state’s last big tremblor, was a 6.7-magnitude blind thrust earthquake that killed fifty-eight, injured nine thousand, and damaged or destroyed more than eighty-two thousand buildings in 1994.

Between 1890 and 1930, the population of Los Angeles grew from fifty thousand to 1.2 million. The movie business transitioned at the same time, from silent films to talkies, low-class “flickers” to “the silver screen.” By the 1940s there were more movie theaters in the United States than banks.

It reminded me of something Jacqueline Arellano talked about that day in the desert, near the border: migrants were often spoken about in terms of numbers, as “waves” and “hordes” or other analogies to reduce their individual humanity. Instead, we should use names. We should see faces. “Storytelling is resistance,” she said.