You’ll Like It Here

Politanoff debuts with an alternately stark and whimsical series of vignettes drawn from early 20th-century stories in the Redondo Reflex and other Southern California newspapers. “A Ducking” portrays a yachtsman slipping into the water, a puff of pipe smoke momentarily marking the site of his disappearance. It’s followed by “How to Avoid Drowning,” which optimistically suggests that “all you need is something to rest a finger on—a floating fifty-gallon barrel, orchestra drum, or copper kettle.” Many accounts of drownings follow, as well as some shootings, including a questionable police shooting in “Mistaken Identity,” evoking a hardscrabble region ruled by draconian lawmen. Most of the crimes reported are petty, such as women cited for smoking in public—“Message to the Authorities” serves as an objection to the gender-discriminating law—or a Portuguese restaurateur arrested for using illegal fishing traps. The strange and playful “Devil in the Whisky” follows a drunken man who steals a boat, then calls for rescue at sea only to swim to shore and face arrest. “Mask Shortage” highlights the mask mandate for the 1918 influenza pandemic, while “Dispatch” evokes a WWI soldier who’d rather face poison gas than wear a gas mask. The project succeeds at breathing life into an era encapsulated by faded newsprint, which, by the end, doesn’t feel so long ago. (Aug.)