Light a fire. Watch it rage.

I cannot lie still on my bed any longer, can barely breathe. Who has brought me to this detestable place and robbed me of my sleep and beer-belly? What a bunch of horseshit! It is those faggoty intellectuals who've never gotten it up themselves, social workers, pussy-ass do-gooders, bleeding shrinks with their Jewishness gone awry; it is Germanic blood, the East Coast school of books and snow, the Pilgrims and Baptists; it is the Pope with his lust for Mary, FDR and his quaint limp, Hitler and his ovens, the beastiality of fertility rites, the slaughter of the buffalo, the death of the Incas and Aztecs, the coming of the white barbarians; it is the condition of the human race, the Klan, the Triumph of Ceremony of the Geese; it is my entire life! It is everything and then some ... I will show the world what is what and who the fuck is me. Me in particular.

I am standing at the corner of Temple and Broadway in front of the old Hall of Justice, talking to three young pretty girls who are on their knees, in cute little mini-skirts and low-cut blouses. None of them wears under-clothes and all of them have bald-headed domes. A poster with red, white and blue paint announces they are protesting the political persecution of Charles Manson, the nut who allegedly masterminded the massacre of several movie stars, including one with an embryo in her fat belly. Supposedly some young kids, high on weird drugs, the Vietnam War and hard rock, under the influence of this stud who fucked minds as well as dead bodies, that allegedly they had, you know, decapitated, mutilated and desecrated the bodies of beautiful Jet-Setters and a fetus trying to get off the ground.

When I first read The Autobiography of the Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta, I was living in Los Angeles. Of course I thought this was one of my hipper endeavors: in a city known for its Chicano influence, I was tapping into a great leader of true movement from the 60s. A Chicano lawyer and activist who had grabbed the proverbial buffalo by the horns and wrestled it to the ground was on my night stand. My infatuation was amplified by my affinity for Hunter Thompson, whose famous depiction of Acosta in Fear and Loathing had led me to read Brown Buffalo in the first place. Up until now, aside from a few articles in books about Thompson, I had never read another book by Acosta.

The fuzz, la placa, la chota, los marranos, la jura or just plain old pig. The eternal enemies of the people.

The Revolt of the Cockroach People, Acosta's second and last novel, is purely focused on his courtroom struggles to help several groups of wrongly accused Chicanos get acquitted. The semi-autobiographical novel—the protaganist's name is Buffalo Zeta Brown—also depicts heavy drug use and promiscuous sex, but the target is clear: Chicanos are getting the short end of the stick and Acosta attempts to show us why.

"Goddamn, Brown! Five minutes and you're ready to start a goddamn riot!"

As you can see from the two large chunks of writing above, Acosta had some fire and rage in his prose. He could certainly raise an eyebrow and shake things up. I would have loved to see him bellow his heavy words in the courtroom. There were passages that had me wanting to throw down my black flag and start slitting throats, as HL Mencken once said. But the book, overall, lacks plot and, outside of Brown (Acosta), the characters are mostly forgettable.

If you guys ever really get serious ... I mean, if you really pick up the gun ... let me know. I'll get in on that one ...

I think it's inevitable for any revolutionary to eventually question what the hell it was they ever started fighting for; and, in the end, I think, no matter how many strides they might make—and there is no doubt that Acosta did some great things for the Chicano movement—they often feel somewhat like a failure. Probably because absolute success isn't an option. And there is certainly a melancholic fatality that permeates his style in parts. I felt like a good chunk of the book should've been cut and then tied back together. A tighter book would've made for a better book. In the end—perhaps like Thompson—Acosta's life became stranger than his own fiction (he disappeared in 1974 while on a boat). Personally I'd rather be known for my life than my books, so maybe that's why, despite this mediocre book, I still can't help but wish Acosta had written even more books. My opinion of Brown Buffalo being one of the best books I've ever read stands. If you care to, you can click on it over there on the right. I promise it's fascinating. But not as fascinating as Acosta's life.