The latest addition to my website is Maceo Montoya‘s Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces. It tells the story of an unnamed Chicano narrator. However, it is a gentle spoof of the conventional Chicano story as not only do we read the autobiography of the (probably unreliable) narrator, we also read the comments of one of his relatives, Ernie, correcting his mistakes about the family, a friend of Ernie, who comments on the work as a Chicanx expert and woke younger person and a professor, commenting as a woke academic. Our hero meets various real Chicano people, including, in particular, the writer Oscar Zeta Acosta, whom the narrator claims to have killed (his actual death remains a mystery). We follow our hero as he goes from would-be great artist who neither paints nor draws but only writes preparatory notes for his works, to the sidekick of a preacher, a long spell in a mental institution and, finally, on a wild ride with Oscar Zeta Acosta, resulting in the latter’s death. It is great fun and Montoya clearly enjoys mocking the great Chicano tradition.