In 1994, the Los Angeles Times published an article contrasting Mike Davis and Kevin Starr, both widely read historians of California. “Mike Davis sees murky decay, while Kevin Starr embraces shiny optimism,” the paper said. The contrast was undeniable, especially to their own admiring readers. “Davis groupies scorned Starr’s boosterism as unfashionably chipper. Many Starr fans dismissed Davis as a left-wing lunatic.”

In reality, Davis and Starr shared a deep mutual admiration and longtime friendship. Starr died in 2017, and Mike Davis died in 2022. When the latter was in palliative care, Jason Sexton approached Davis to record his thoughts about Starr — many of which Davis had never shared publicly — for his book Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California. Below is an edited transcript of that conversation between Davis and Sexton, which took place July 6, 2022, in San Diego.

Davis’s criticisms of Starr are astute and penetrating, but they are greatly outweighed in this conversation by his admiration for Starr as a scholar and a person. Reflecting on an exchange with Starr’s wife Sheila after his death, he said, “She told me after he died that Kevin loved me, and I was incredibly touched by that. But it’s hard to pin Kevin down.” Just shy of four months before his own death, Davis thanked Sexton for the opportunity to talk about his friend, saying, “We’ll never see the likes of him again.”