Word: starrs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Always using individuals to dramatize his points and employing a series of heightened dramatic moments which are themselves symbols, Starr catalogues the bewildering variety of contradictory meanings which California held for Americans. Agrarian paradise, gold mine, intellectual and spiritual salvation, contemplative peace, the American Mediterranean -- California meant all these things and more to those who settled the land...
MIDWAY IN THE BOOK, in perhaps the inest chapter, Starr uses the life and thoughts of Jack London as an allegory of the potential tragedy hidden in the dream. As a writer, London rises out of the working class to national fame and wealth. As he becomes rich and famous London indulges a variety of self-destructive dreams; he thinks himself a Nietzschean superman; he builds himself a great mansion which burns to the ground; he kids himself that his habitual drinking is not alcoholism; he refuses to believe that his aging body is no longer strong and healthy. Finally...
...same time as Starr, with his 20th century values, is sympathetic to the dreams of Californians, he is quick to point out the false and narrow ideals Californians often had. London's delusions are only one example in the long history of the California mind going astray. The first visitors viewed with disgust the polyglot racial mix of Hispanic California, while later Protestant settlers hated the Catholics. Starr dutifully chants the litany of violent gold rush crimes and horrible racist acts against Indians and Chinese, but he makes it clear that these social realities are secondary matters. "...California concealed...
...Starr is not a historian in the contemporary social scientist mold. The direct and discernible influences on his style are 19th century romantic American historians like Prescott and Bancroft. They developed a style of history which demands literary excellence and imagination and Starr has both. It is a style which is narrative rather than analytical; the author's analysis is implied in and intuited from his selection and presentation of materials. It reads like an epic poem, like a saga of heroes, and it means to evoke a feeling of continuity: movement forward along not always logical but inevitable lines...
...Starr has succeeded with the technique so far, but if he hopes for a total success he should pursue the history of California to its present resolution. He is leaving Harvard for California this summer to work for Mayor Alioto in San Francisco and teach as a visiting professor at Berkeley. He writes that he plans two more installments on the California experience. Perhaps he will finally explain to me the Beach Boys and Ronald Reagan...