Word: starrs
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...piece of ephemera on the western slopes of the farthest mountains. It has been a symbol for all that American society has hoped for and sought after. Californians themselves have been intrigued by the imaginative position of the place in American life. In Americans and the California Dream Kevin Starr tries to study the imaginative life of California in America. Starr, a Californian himself, spent the last five years researching and writing the book. During that time he sifted through a mountain of material in order to "deal with the imaginative aspects of California's journey to identity." Because...
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...
...Soldier's Tale by Igor Stravinsky. This is really music (and very good music at that), but what could be more dramatic than listening to Alan Heimert as the Devil and Kevin Starr as the Soldier? (Although Starr is evidently as good at politics as he is at teaching, his versatility presumably will not extend to playing the violin part himself.) 8:30 Sunday in the Leverett JCR. Free...
...these guys were unanimous choices for the team," Harvard coach John Lee said yesterday. "Starr and Blakinger are tough wrestlers. They really picked up wins when we needed them...