Chacón’s Gems: Book Review of The Last Philosopher in Texas
Daniel Chacón is the author of The Last Philosopher in Texas: Fictions and Superstitions (2024, Arte Publico Press. He boasts an impressive resume that includes the novel, The Cholo Tree (2017), Hotel Juárez: Stories, Rooms, and Loops (2013), which won both the Pen Oakland Award for Literary Excellence and the Tejas NACCS Award for Best Book of Fiction. His collection of short stories, Unending Rooms, was the winner of the Hudson Prize. He also has a another novel, and the shadows took him (2005), and another collection of stories called Chicano Chicanery (1996). He is editor of the posthumous poems of Andrés Montoya, A Jury of Trees and co-editor of The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: The Selected Work of José Antonio Burciaga (2009). Chacón is recipient of The Hudson Prize, a Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, The American Book Award, The Pen Oakland, and the Peter and Jean de Main Emerging Writers Award, among others.
Full disclosure: I have always been a big fan of Daniel Chacón’s work. In fact, his short story, “Biggest City in the World” (which appears in Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature), is one of my all-time favorites that I teach to this day. Among his many talents, Chacón has a knack for writing about Latine intersectionality and Latine identity in multifaceted ways. In The Last Philosopher in Texas: Fictions and Superstitions, he weaves together one of the most thoughtful (and yes philosophical) short story collections published in the last few years.
As the title suggests, these are stories of fiction and superstition, yet Chacón’s characters live in worlds where reality and superstition can be one and the same. As a savvy writer, he brings the characters in and out of these worlds seamlessly and convincingly. It’s no exaggeration to say that all of the stories in this collection accomplish this, but one of my favorite examples is the story, “Vinegar Flowing Under the Chairs,” in which the main character gets a letter from a father who had been deceased for over ten years. The tale does not move toward contemplating that impossibility; instead it shifts toward such rarities as the fact that the narrator lives in a gentrified neighborhood where his rent has not been raised, despite the odds. As we learn of the contents of the letter, we are told that it is written in Spanish, a language that the narrator “had long forgotten, trying for so many years to fit in with the white people of the private college where I had gone, and then years of teaching second grade on the rich side of town” (58). On a literal level, the story revolves around a main character who is not sure how to get the letter interpreted. On so many other levels, the story centers on such themes as how to interpret words when perhaps one has lost part of a cultural identity. How can one decipher meaning from words that are no longer theirs?
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$199.99 (as of April 22, 2026 10:33 GMT -04:00 – More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)A handful of the stories in the collection are so short that some might consider them flash fiction. I’m not a fan of the term, since a story is a story is a story, plus these shorter stories accomplish just as much as the others. But I mention them because they showcase Chacón’s varied talents. “Santa Muerte,” is a two-pager that should not be one page or word longer. The story is about the death of a mother and the possessive pettiness that sometimes follows the death of a relative. Like another two-page tale, “Wonder Bread,” which is about a character who accidentally stabs himself in the eye, the stories make you appreciate the art of brevity—something which is often lost on some contemporary short story authors.
As I read Chacón’s latest collection, I couldn’t help but get the impression that he enjoyed writing this book. Maybe it’s because is has so many fascinating, original stories, or maybe it’s because it has so many gems. Whatever the case, this is one collection that needs to get into as many hands as possible.
