GREETINGS FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

By Monica Highland (Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co., Portland, Ore.: $24.95) Here are fine reproductions (and wishful images) of our region’s mountains, deserts and towns from the turn of the century to the end of World War II. Most striking are the pastel tints, which turn sharply realistic black-and-white photos into dreamy fantasies (girls in pale blue and wedding-white dresses pick flowers, fluffy pink balls of snow, from “California’s largest rose bush”) and surreal landscapes (gray waves break on a silver-green ocean as a fire-orange sun sets). The fathomable, even intimate scale of Southern California cities in the pre-World War II postcards tugs at our nostalgia. Small was beautiful, one thinks while looking at postcards for UCLA (a few red buildings scattered on green plains near a lake) and for Culver City (a cozy cluster of buildings bearing little resemblance to today’s suburban blur). Not all of the tints were true, of course--one well-meaning artist applies a lonely splotch of pink to a postcard showing homely red and gray oil towers reflected in a lake of oil--an attempt, perhaps, to suggest a rosy economy.