Ilan Stavans, "Bandido: Oscar "Zeta" Acosta and the Chicano Experience"
For those not in the know, Oscar Zeta Acosta is the Dr. Gonzo of Hunter Thompson�s Las Vegas story, a big guy with a small dick who did a lot of drugs and acted like a crazy man. There are now three unauthorized biographies of Hunter; it only makes sense that somebody would try and make money off the sidekick.
But why? Acosta already wrote two semi-autobiographical works (�Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo� and �Revolt of the Cockroach People�), and Hunter says so much about Acosta in both his stories and the recently published volume of letters, is there anything else we need to know?
No, actually. The best thing about Acosta�s books come from the foreword from Thompson. Acosta may have been the inspiration for the Dr. Gonzo character (usually referred to as �My Attorney�), but the character is not a writer. Neither is Acosta. Though his books are sporadically interesting, ultimately they come off as cheap imitations of Thompson�s style.
Acosta publicly stated he was pissed at Thompson for putting so much of his life in print and he wasn�t getting any money off the deal, as well as none of the glory, but it really just seems like sour grapes.
In the aforementioned volume of letters, you can see some of the bitterness between the two, as Acosta, tries to manipulate Thompson through threats of litigation unless they either A, give him co-credit as author, even though he knows he didn�t actually �write� anything; or B, pay him half the money made of sales of the book. He settled for C, suggested by the publisher � they would publish two of his books if he would just lay off.
Nice way to exploit the situation, Acosta. Sounds like something, well, something the kind of lawyers you profess to despise would do.
Anyway, this book tells me hardly anything I didn�t already know, doesn�t offer any particular insight on his life or disappearance, and (my personal pet peeve) is poorly copy-edited. Not only does he call Hunter�s creation �Roul [sic] Duke� but the bibliography lists one title as �When the Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompso" [sic].
