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The Hispanic Malcolm X.Writer.Activist.Civil rights attorney.Obese, dark-skinned, and angry.Man with a surplus of personality.Man of vision. All the above describe Oscar "Zeta" Acosta.El Paso-born, Acosta became a leading figure in the Chicano rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, winning landmark decisions in civil rights cases as an attorney. As a tireless writer and activist, he had a profound influence on his contemporaries. He seemed to be everywhere at once, knowing everyone in "el movimiento" and involving himself in many of its key moments. Tumultuous and prone to excess, he is the Samoan in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In 1974, after a last phone call to his son, Acosta disappeared in the Mexican state of Mazatlán.

Hailed as "a fine, learned homage" (Kirkus), "a kaleidoscopic portrait" (Booklist), and "a game of mirrors" (The Washington Post), Bandido is a veritable tour de force. Through interviews and Acosta's writings (published and unpublished), Ilan Stavans reconstructs--even reinvents--the man behind the myth. Part biographical appraisal, part reflection on the legacy of the Civil Rights era, Bandido is an opportunity to understand the challenges and pitfalls Latinos face in finding a place of their own in America.
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Immensely readable...A Chicano Manchild in the Promised Land."

-- Publishers Weekly

Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano layer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

"Acosta has entered counterculture folklore. This is the life story of a man whose pain is made real, whose roots are in question, and whose society seems to be fragmenting around him."

-- Saturday Review of Literature ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Read this and watch Fear and Loathing in Vegas again
By reading this book before watching the movie, you will see what Dr. Gonzo's life was like right before he decides to become a lawyer.If you have ever felt alienated by American ideals, regardless of your race, you will relate to this book.Acosta's writing is good and he does a great job of describing what the character is feeling when he encounters life, drugs, and ulcers.

A superb book
This book is one of the most memorable I have read in many years.Oscar lived an incredible life, and his ability to render it in this book is consistently amazing.I've read this book about three times, and I reflect on the trajectory of Oscar's life often.

Good saga from a good writer
I heard about Oscar'Zeta' Acosta basically from reading Hunter S. Thompson's book but became quickly fascinated by Dr. Gonzo and wanted to know more about him. I was pleased to find out he had also written some books and was even more pleased to find out he was(is?) a very good writer. Truly an inspiration to anyone who hasever felt their identity as an american is something that they have hadto come to grips with. Apart from that serious subtext, it also a very entertaining and amusing story that rolls along, introducing some interesting and memorable characters and situations. A passionate human being wrote this book and it is filled with all the honesty and humanity of someone bearing his soul to achieve a greater sense of genuine self which for Oscar Acosta means being "A Brown Buffalo"

Finding Gonzo
To finally learn who the inspriation behind H.S. Thompson's Gonzo attorney was a treat.This book is a must read for anyone who desired the guts to quit their job and hit the road and discover life on the 'other' side of life.Every American should graze where the Buffalo once roamed.

wallowing in the trough of excess
Once one gets past themultiple occurences of multi-hued vomit and the daily self-love in the shower... As autobiography, one would do well to read thiswith some skepticism; Acosta makes himself into an icon of the 60s and 70s, and lessa faithful recorder of that time.However, the book can also function as a wonderful novel read in the tradition of pulp novels of the 70s such as Valley of the Dolls.The last chapter shifts from the searching bravado and life on the edge quality into a moving testimony of who Acosta is, and what he is.The book has become one of the important books in the growing recognition of Chicano literature, and Oscar's papers are in a collection open to the public at the University of California. There's a 60 minute videotape of him, 10 of which are Acosta reading from this book.I wonder if his virtual voice is as wild and rich as the voice of the author in print? ... Read more

Product Description
This milestone collection gathers unpublished stories, essays, letters, poems and a teleplay written by Acosta (1935-1974), the Chicano attorney, political activist and writer, between the early 1960s and shortly before his misterious disappearance in Mazatlán, Mexico in 1974. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

work of literature
With this book the Brown Buffalo has established himself as a great writer of gonzo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Kansas
Re-Saturday Review of Literature
Oscar Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974, not 1971 (the year of his trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Thompson).

Correction
Re-Saturday Review of Literature
Oscar Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974, not 1971 (the year of his trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Thompson).

First Impressions
This is the most realistic book I have ever seen about Mexican American hippies in Aztlan, the Chicanos of the 1960's neo-freedom movements. It will surely become a collector's item worth saving in this era of gung-ho Americanism which does not know the kind of objectivity Acosta displays with regard to how we think and why we believe as we do. Hunter S. Thompson described the author better than I can in his introduction to the book, highlighting his uniqueness while lamenting his untimely passing. I will write more after I give the book a more thorough second reading.

Sex, Drugs, and Politics
I read this book after finding out that Oscar Zeta Acosta was the fat Samoan lawyer from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."Acosta's style is similar, with a lot of drugs and sex with minors.The differencesare that Acosta isn't tripping the whole time and he has time to incitepolitical rallies.I love when they protest the Catholic church, or whenhe pleasures himself with some nubile young high schoolers under a blanketduring a sit-in.... For those interested in the turbulent times that wasthe 60s, this is a must-read.

An awareness that should be taught to todays young Chicanos
After reading this book, and actually livingthrough those turbulent times of the 60's and 70' s , it was refreshing to read and feel the burning frustration and love that this man was experiencing and the way he expressed his anger against the machine. This type of awareness has beenlost , due to us the forefathers of the Chicano Movement, to teach our ownand other's children of how important those actions were, so that we mayemphasize education, political power and family values. We have implementeda course in Chicano Studies in schools, we now have politicalrepresentation in our governments, and many more success stories that aredue to the work of such people as Cesar Chavez, Ruben Salazar and CorkyGonzales. Oscar Zeta was a man amongst his own that was afraid of nothingand no one.My thanks to him for fighting the powers that be and forcreating an example for all of us, regardless of race. You have to stand upfor what you believe and Acosta is atrue testament to that. ... Read more

Product Description
Magical realism has become almost synonymous with Latin American fiction, but this way of representing the layered and often contradictory reality of the topsy-turvy, late-capitalist, globalizing world finds equally vivid expression in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. Writers and filmmakers such as Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Ana Castillo, Julie Dash, Hanif Kureishi, and Salman Rushdie have made brilliant use of magical realism to articulate the trauma of dislocation and the legacies of colonialism that people of color experience in the postcolonial, multiethnic world. This book seeks to redeem and refine the theory of magical realism in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. Frederick Aldama engages in theoretically sophisticated readings of Ana Castillo's So Far from God, Oscar "Zeta" Acosta's Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, and The Moor's Last Sigh, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, and Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi's Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Coining the term "magicorealism" to characterize these works, Aldama not only creates a postethnic critical methodology for enlarging the contact zone between the genres of novel, film, and autobiography, but also shatters the interpretive lens that traditionally confuses the transcription of the real world, where truth and falsity apply, with narrative modes governed by other criteria. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Magical Realism
Magical realism has long been associated with Latin American literature and film.Aldama (University of Colorado, Boulder) examines its connections to other cultures as well.In five chapters, plus an introductory discussion of terminology and a coda, he emphasizes the need for precision in distinguishing between aesthetics and ontology while analyzing the films of Dash and Kureishi, the novels of Rushdie, and the Chicano/a narratives of Acosta and Castillo.Aldama posits the importance of storytelling techniques: parody, mimesis-as-play, rebellion, self-reflexivity, and the subaltern voice of the trickster/picaro.Citing such authors as Cervantes and Garcia Marquez as models, he stresses the need for imaginative writers and artists to question the effects of globalizatoin and consumptoin in the modern world.Joining a literature that includes Aldama's edited volume Arturo Islas: The Uncollected Works (2003) and related studes by such critics as Seymour Menton and Edward Said, this thought-provoking analysis should inspire further inquiry and discussion.Summing up: Recommended-all libaries serving upper-division undergraduates and above.Essential-researchers in the fields of comparative literature and film.
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

Fascinating Study
I've just finished reading this nuanced and rich study of magical realism and finally understand not only how it differs from realism and the fantastic, but also how the make-believe of fiction has been confused with real facts that enable real politics. An excellent book for scholars and creative writers alike.

A valuable contribution to an important field.
This book is a must for serious scholars working on magic realism, postcolonialism, American multiethnic literature, andglobalization.Aldama begins by offering a helpful overview of the critics who have observed and theorized magic realism (or magicorealism, as he dubs it).Even more usefully, he interrogates those theories, explains his own fresh take on the subject, and trains his critical lens specifically and in depth on a spectrum of magic realist works of fiction and film--somealready canonical, some just beginning to come under academic scrutiny.Though written in a complex and theoretically sophisticated style, this book is appropriate for advanced undergraduates.A valuable contribution to an important field.

A poorly re-written dissertation on a much debated topic
This book can only be convincing to those who have no knowledge of the long and by now tedious debate concerning Magical Realism in the field of Latin American literature. What some reviewers call his "innovative" posture is actually based on one of the most conservative and oldest understandings of Magical Realism, Seymore Menton's, articulated in the 1960s. He basically skips over the latest and best criticism by Latin Americanists concerning Magical Realism. He brushes off complex and interesting arguments made by Alberto Moreiras in the space of one paragraph. There is no mention of Moses Valdez who also has written a serious scholarly essay on the topic. Aldama dismisses without confronting in any sustained way the monumental anthology on Magical Realism put out by Lois Parkinson Zamora in recent years. He creates the neologism "magicorealism" or "magicoreelism" (when talking about film) but gives no substantial critical reason for the creation of these terms; At least not one that coherently distinguishes it from any myriad of definitions already available and used when talking about the old term "Magical Realism". There is a lot of confusing argumentation and a lot of neat sounding words that may confuse and convince those who don't know any better of the "greatness" of his argument. However there is nothing here of any real substance. It is little more than a barely re-written dissertation (his dissertation was on a similar topic) that some how made it into press at UT Austin. For any one interested I direct them to Menton's monumental work on the topic, followed by Moreiras, and then the Parkinson Zamora anthology and Moses Valdez's article. All of these people are conversant in the topic, they write in a way that is, for the most part clear and interesting in terms of the theoretical debate.

Editorial Reviews
Book Description: Magical realism has become almost synonymous with Latin American fiction, but this way of representing the layered and often contradictory reality of the topsy-turvy, late-capitalist, globalizing world finds equally vivid expression in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. Writers and filmmakers such as Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Ana Castillo, Julie Dash, Hanif Kureishi, and Salman Rushdie have made brilliant use of magical realism to articulate the trauma of dislocation and the legacies of colonialism that people of color experience in the postcolonial, multiethnic world. This book seeks to redeem and refine the theory of magical realism in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. The author engages in theoretically sophisticated readings of Ana Castillo's So Far from God, Oscar "Zeta" Acost's Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, and The Moor's Last Sigh, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, and Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi's Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Coining the term "magicorealism" to characterize these works, Aldama not only creates a postethnic critical methodology for enlarging the contact zone between the genres of novel, film, and autobiography, but also shatters the interpretive lens that traditionally confuses the transcription of the real world, where truth and falsity apply, with narrative modes governed by other criteria.

Reviews:
"In this exciting new book, Frederick Luis Aldama has done an outstanding job of remapping 'magical realism"--Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.

"Frederick Luis Aldama offers a vigorous revisionary perspective on postcolonial literature and, more specifically, on the much discussed phenomenon of magicorealism. He has a commanding knowledge of postcolonial theory, and he performs a welcome critical task in demonstrating how it tends to confuse the confines of the academy with the contours of the real world, textuality with ontology. Aldama himself is a political critic, but he sanely argues that the arena of any serious politics is the world of living people and not a text"--Robert Alter, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley and author of Canon and Creativity.

"Providing a lucid and cogent critique of the tendency in contemporary criticism to ontologize "magical realism," a tendency that implicitly articulates a relatively simple mimetic relationship between "magical realism" and various postcolonial cultures, Frederick Aldama instead posits a theory of what he calls "rebellious mimetics" that introduces a complex aesthetic and political mediation in that relationship. In doing so, he weaves together a series of excellent analyses of novels and films by authors and artists as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Ana Castillio, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Julie Dash, and Hanif Kureishi. This is a very significant contribution to the study of this genre"--Abdul R. JanMohamed, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley.

"In this insightful and forceful study of magical realism, Aldama successfully argues that a true postethnic and postcolonial criticism should not (con)fuse the world with the text. His commentaries on Castillo, Dash, Kureishi, Acosta, and Rushdie force the readers to see these artists' magicorealist works in a new light, thus revealing all of their splendid and contradictory complexities. Aldama's book is a must for anyone who wishes to understand the intricacies of magical realism and the vitality of this genre in contemporary European postcolonial and ethnic American literature and scholarship"--Emilio Bejel, Professor of Spanish American Literature, University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Gay Cuban Nation.

"Through a study of the playful narrative techniques of writers and film-makers such as Dash, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie and Kureishi, Frederick Luis Aldama offers a powerful critique of those who view magical realism as either a means toward postcolonial resistance or as a depiction of some exotic real world. Proposing a "postethnic" approach, Aldama argues convincingly that a reader's or viewer's understanding of the aesthetic dimensions of what he calls "magicorealism" can lead to greater political understanding than older, more ideologically oriented interpretations"--Herbert Lindenberger, Avalon Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, Stanford University.

"It is rare that we come across a truly great book, one in which fierce intelligence asserts itself in pages that truly matter. Such a book assigns us the task of reordering what we have taken as true on the promise of an understanding more profound. In such a book, we are guided by extraordinary vision, by an author with keen insight. In the rarest of occasions, we read words that are wise, words that make broad connection and interrogate a range of thought that afterwards we deem necessary. Postethnic Narrative Criticism is such a book; Frederick Aldama is such an author"--Alfred Arteaga, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

This work offers a highly valuable rethinking of magical realism, one that assesses previous work in new ways, one that extends the historical reach of arguments about magical realism, and one that brings a new level of sophistication to arguments about it"--Carl Guitierrez-Jones, Professor and Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2004. The length of the article is 5036 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: La frontera como falso refugio chicano, el caso de Oscar Zeta Acosta: The Brown Buffalo.(author)
Author: Jesús Rosales
Publication: Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 19Issue: 2Page: 50(8)

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This digital document is an article from MELUS, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 796 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Postethnic Narrative Criticism: Magicorealism in Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Ana Castillo, Julie Dash, Hanif Kureishi, and Salman Rushdie.(Book Review)
Author: Rafael E. Saumell
Publication: MELUS (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 30Issue: 1Page: 243(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents. The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze. The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, was printed as a book in 1972, and was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1998 starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. ... Read more

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Chapters: Gonzo Journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Where the Buffalo Roam, Spider Jerusalem, Uncle Duke, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Ralph Steadman, the Rum Diary, Gonzo: the Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Breakfast With Hunter. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 69. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a 1998 film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The film, directed by Terry Gilliam, stars Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. Previous attempts to adapt the book into a film included Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando as Duke and Gonzo. At one point, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were considered for the duo; John Cusack was also almost cast. Animator/filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, Martin Scorsese, and Oliver Stone all tried unsuccessfully to direct an adaptation. Thompson met Depp and was convinced no one else could play him. Filmmaker Alex Cox was eventually hired to direct with Depp and Del Toro committed to starring in the film, but the filmmaker had "creative differences" with Thompson over the script treatment as documented in the documentary Breakfast with Hunter. Gilliam was subsequently hired and made the film with the writer's approval. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a box office failure, grossing US$10.6 million at the North American box office, well below its $18.5 million budget. It has since become a cult classic due in large part to its release on DVD, including a Special Edition released by The Criterion Collection. The film opens with a montage of protests regarding the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, before cutting to Raoul Duke (Depp) and Dr. Gonzo (Del Toro) speeding down the desert of Nevada. Duke, under ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=5842075 ... Read more