The Quixote Cult - Softcover

Gonzalez, Genaro

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558852549 ISBN 13: 9781558852549

Publisher: Arte Publico Press, 1998

Synopsis

Like a Carlos Santana riff on a Miguel de Cervantes theme, The Quijote Cult is a lyrical, satirical look at a group of Vietnam-era Chicano college students - and would-be radical activists - who gulp down amphetamines as eagerly as they devour the writings of Che Guevara and Jack Kerouac. The embattled hero, known simply as De la O, must deal with adversaries such as hostile family members ("Think your scholarship money will cover getting a haircut?"), budding feminists ("What's wrong with being a big mama?"), baffled professors ("You know what octopus is?"), and, of course, drunken dentists ("Such a messy and unheroic way to die"). In search of political, spiritual, and chemical fulfillment, De la 0 and his freewheeling friends Lizard, Nacho, Coco, and Gabi zoom madly across the continent - south to Mexico City, north to Michigan, and west to California. At last, though, he begins to wonder, Who's zoomin' who?

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Visceral, angry and edgy, Gonzalez's (Rainbow's End) novel about a Chicano hippie activist in Southern Texas comes to us like a time capsule from the 1960s. The narrator, De la O, pursues a quest for social justice and ethnic pride, identifying with Cervantes's visionary idealist, Don Quixote, as he tilts at bigoted fellow students and teachers?and at Chicanos who ape or worship the Anglos. De la O joins a Chicano organizing movement and rallies exploited farm workers, acid heads, Vietnam vets, dope pushers and squeaky-clean Catholic activists to the cause. They are joined by disgruntled intellectual fellow travelers who, like himself, are steeped in Che Guevara, Sartre, the Beats, Nietzsche and Borges. Gonzalez neither bashes nor romanticizes the era, and though De la O's self-righteousness, studied cool and adolescent rants can be tedious, Gonzalez exhibits a fine ear when rendering his protagonist's leftist rhetoric and sardonic opinions about life and death and America's class and racial divisions. Gonzalez's knack for creating offbeat personalities falters with his female characters, among them Rachel, the Jewish Aztec Princess, and "brown Barbie" Genoveva, who are almost interchangeable props for the macho males' egos. More convincing are De la O's cronies, like well-off drug-dealer Lucio, who, weighed down with the responsibility of a wife and baby, turns to religion, i.e., sorcery, and makes psychedelic trips into a spirit realm.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

"Visceral, angry and edgy, González's ... novel about a Chicano hippie activist in Southern Texas cames to us like a time capsule from the 1960's" -- Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1558852549
• ISBN 13: 9781558852549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260