CPR For Dummies

by Mickey Z
  • $14.95 Paperback
    ISBN: 978-1-933293-58-5

    US only, email
    for international rates


Open to any page in CPR for Dummies and you just may read a line like this:

He’s a priest; of course he hesitated when he realized he was about to hit someone with a crucifix.

OR

I needed to believe someone higher than the government was in charge of things so I went to church.

OR

“We are here to, like, honor your loins and everything,” said Ruth. 

The world is creeping towards destruction—no, not theoretically—it’s really happening. In these last hours will humanity come together to correct their collective wrongs? Or will there be rampant beatings and kinky sex?

A group of strangers are brought together by synchronicity to answer  the age-old question: you lookin’ at me, punk? The answer entails the comeuppance of the rich, police brutality, aerobic instruction by the Messiah, sexual slavery, and mutating genes.

(Is this sounding good? I hope so. It’s not easy writing these. I’m just a corporate monkey trying to snag your hard-earned dollars but don’t let that get in the way of buying this book. Did I mention SEX yet?)

Author Mickey Z’s experimental tour-de-force is a funny, challenging deconstruction of the concept of the “novel” as well as life in the United States of America.

What They Are Saying About CPR For Dummies

“What makes it so formidable is the way it serves so many purposes. Not only does it appeal to the interests of the reader, it also gives added depth to Mickey’s characters and opinions…There are few books out there like CPR for Dummies, and perhaps that’s best. This is a story worth your attention. It’s probably a good thing that so few writers are willing to take the kind of chances Mickey Z. goes for.”
—Unlikely Stories

“It’s everything a novel tackling the mystifying “real world” of today SHOULD be. It is thoroughly original not so much in formal invention –considering his predecessors, which he learned from as every good writer does — but in personal style. It is a novel that could only have been written by one person: Mickey Z. Which is how all creative works should be: unique, alive..”
—Dissident Voice

“Mickey Z. has thought a lot about politics and a lot about sex. He’s thought about politics while having sex, and about sex while having politics. As a result, Mr. Z. has written an orgasmic Left revolt-book! I am surprised that I liked the novel, actually. I didn’t know that I enjoyed anything written after 1931.”
— Sparrow, poet and presidential candidate

“Mickey Z.’s CPR for Dummies is a ribald collage of styles, points of view, and blasphemies. Written loosely in the style of a play, the novel includes the author as a character, a sex-crazed priest and a confession-booth orgy to rival the best of Rabelais. Both satiric and insightful, the book manages to invoke both Armageddon and optimism. With politics sure to rile even the most self-righteous liberal, Mickey pulls off a tour de force — a textbook within a play within a parody within an urban memoir. It is a book that is as tongue in cheek as Vonnegut and Bukowski — funny, sexy, surprising and entirely iconoclastic.”
— Christine Hamm, author of The Transparent Dinner, poetry

“Reading Mickey Z’s first novel, CPR for Dummies, is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Each puzzle piece contains an image, an interaction, an informative riff, or a comment. As these disparate elements come together, a unified picture emerges.”
—Small Press Review, Thaddeus Rutkowski