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References

[edit]

Hmmm, never heard of this guy. Needs references... I'll dig a bit...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1027/p01s02-ussc.html

RN 07:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From one of the potted biographies I consulted before I banged out the current stub:

Starr has served as Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Eliot House at Harvard, executive assistant to the Mayor of San Francisco, the City Librarian of San Francisco, a daily columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and a contributing editor to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times.
The author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, Starr has written and/or edited fourteen books, six of which are part of his American and the California Dream series. His writing has won him a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Society of American Historians, and the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California.
--Calton | Talk 07:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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 Fixed --Light show (talk) 15:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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Reliability?

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Starr makes some unusual claims about Jules Tavernier in both Americans and the California Dream (1973) and The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s (1997). No other source says these things:

  • Charles Warren Stoddard introduced Tavernier to Hawaii
    • Possible, but I haven't seen this anywhere else.
  • Became court painter to the king
    • I think this might be a mistake by Starr. I believe it was Tavernier's friend Strong who was court painter. I have also seen this claim repeated by other sources. It was Strong's wife who was friends with the king. It seems highly unlikely that Tavernier would ever be "court painter" to anyone in power. He hated authority, had contempt for his own patrons, and destroyed his art work if his wealthy benefactors complained. This is not a guy who would ever be a "court painter", nor do his works reflect that genre.
  • Died from drugs and alcohol
    • Tavernier's alcoholism is said to have contributed to his death, but I haven't seen anything about drug use. Again, he might be mistaking Tavernier for someone else? Apparently Starr alleged that Tavernier used opium in Americans and the California Dream (1973), but there is no evidence for this claim. Ewing 1978 also called Starr out on this in his dissertation: "This statement, so typical of contemporary remarks about Tavernier, is not a result of an examination of the very few original documents available, nor of an analysis of the artistic work, but a response to his reputation as a bohemian." As far as I can tell Starr makes this claim because of Tavernier's loose association with Robert Louis Stevenson, who did use opium-based medicine for his health. This is unusual scholarship. Furthermore, asserting some relationship between the two is also strange, as Stevenson didn't like Tavernier and was responsible for telling Tavernier's friends to stay away from him.

I have looked at both Starr's books and find no supporting footnotes for these claims. Viriditas (talk) 00:45, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Counterargument. As a member of the Bohemian club Starr had insider knowledge. Note, Ewing partially addresses this, saying that the BC were not reliable sources of info. Viriditas (talk) 02:28, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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