Today's Stories

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
October 10 / 12, 2008

CPR for Dummies

Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

By ADAM ENGEL

We have recordings, but no music; we have movies, but no film; we have books, but no literature.

Remember when we were in our teens and early 20s, the incredible gamut of living authors to choose from? Pynchon, Gaddis, Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Delillo, Salinger, Brautigan, Cathy Acker, Roth, Bellow, Malamud, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, Grace Paley, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Audre Lorde, Charles Olsen, Jack Spicer, Allan Ginsberg, A.R. Ammons, Burroughs, Coover, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman and on and on and on? Ever been to a bookstore lately? Check out the "new" poetry and fiction? Like the soulless music, the childish movies and TV shows, etc. there's nothing but "dead grandma" stories, straight "narratives, up-lifting "personal dramas" for the Oprah crowd...

I'm bored. I need something to READ.

I guess I wouldn't be chewing such sour grapes if there were enough real publishers to give readers and writers an actual choice beyond the .current "marketable" 19th century-style novels with 20th century signifiers offered up by B&N (remember when there were OTHER bookstores?) Jane Austen and the Brontes wrote great books. Why do so many of "today's writers" try to re-write them, as if two centuries of industrialization, modernism, technology, insane wars etc. hadn't passed?

On the other hand, there's Mickey Z.'s CPR FOR DUMMIES Not so much an "experimental" novel, but a novel that wisely follows the legacy a century of modernists and post-modernists left to him. Wry, dry humor; "real" events interposes with fictional lives; a Henry Fielding-type "performance" by the author/narrator. 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. But most aren't.

"CPR For Dummies" is the first fiction I actually enjoyed reading since the near simultaneous deaths of William Gaddis, Kathy Acker,,and William Burroughs in the late 1990s - early 2000s. It's kind of like Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion got together to produce a very strange, very funny, but ultimately very frightening "child."

CPR is a montage of real and fictional events. The unbelievable, insane, grim, horrific realities, and Mickey Z' wonderfully life-affirming fictions.

At the center of it all is Janie, aspiring actress and Gal Friday for a pornographic magazine.

Janie is one of the sexiest fictional characters since Betty and/or Veronica (whomever you prefer; both would be nice). Hence, she is held hostage by a lecherous priest who convinces his sexually repressed septuagenarian flock (plus Ruth, a young women confused about a lot of things, mostly sexual in nature) that Janie is the Second Coming, her initials are "JC," while he plots to get into her pants. But while she is mistaken for a male deity, "JC," she displays all the qualities of the matriarchal, pre-civilization goddess (though not the somewhat sinister, civilized Aphrodite): sex, art and creative anarchy trump repression, control, and ultimately destructive violence. The primordial power of unreppressed (though not promiscuous; she is loyal to her boyfriend, Lenny D) sexuality, leads to a kind of "contact" with life that is closer to a true "spiritual experience" (i.e. Janie gets the old folks and Rachel to go-go dance their hyper-civilized cares away) than the strictures and ultimate hypocrisies of "organized religion" as manifest in a self-righteous priest, castigating them on one hand, while jerking off with the other. Janie is a true "healer" -- as Ruth would testify -- as well as the kind of messiah I would want coming (and coming again; a second coming?) to save my sorry ass by reveling in LIFE rather than the phony world of "the spirit" -- a contrast that resulted, ultimately, in the mess we're in: allegedly "spiritual" people worshiping death, denying LIFE -- and hence, sex and women -- in favor of some mean-assed god who has nothing better to do than brow-beat a bunch of nomads in the desert (or old folks in a church basement). This is, for me the center of the book. The character of Janie versus the macho construction workers, the priest, the niggling old women and their perverse husbands (all of whom have dirty secrets, as opposed to Janie and the innocent Ruth, who is, "as a child" in her naiveté; hence, the perfect candidate for "apostle.").

In other words, Life, Sex, Creative Anarchy versus Technology, Repression, Atomic warfare.

Now THAT'S worth reading about.

Also, one of the many sub-plots in CPR FOR DUMMIES is that a meteor is heading straight toward earth and we are all going to die, quite soon. Enjoy.

II: Talking to Mickey Z.

Holden Caulfield wished he could call up authors of books he'd enjoyed and "shoot the breeze" with them. I tried to imagine "today's" fictions are expressions of personal ideas and imagination by real people rather than novelizations of sit-coms written by teams of corporate hacks. In other words, I "called up" Mickey Z. (as if such a person actually exists) via email and asked him some questions about CPR FOR DUMMIES....

Q: One of the most interesting techniques you use is the "narrator as performer," which was used by guys like Henry Fielding in Tom Jones, and Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five and several other novels, but seems to have disappeared. By "performer" I mean that the narrator "talks" to the reader while he's ostensibly creating the story, commenting on his own scenes, characters, sentences, constantly "keeping the ball in the air." As if it's all happening "live" as part of a performance. You acknowledge doing this in the "CPR" as a way of making the nightmarish realities cited in the book more palatable. Was this a political decision, an aesthetic decision, or both? Why do you think this technique is no longer "in style," replaced instead by the somber, sober, more "formal" 19th century voice?

MZ: I'm not sure why this technique is not all the rage these days. Everything else seems so self-referential: movies, TV, pop music, etc. As for my use of the "narrator as performer," it came about for two main reasons. Firstly, it felt necessary at times. I was genuinely concerned that I might have gone overboard with the rapid changes in direction, so to speak, so the narration served as a Greek chorus of sorts. The other reason was simply that it I enjoyed it doing it so much. I always loved the wisecracking asides of early film comedians. For example, in Horse Feathers, Groucho Marx is asked by a jealous husband: "What are you doing here?" Groucho replies: "I'm the plumber. I'm just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes." Then he turns to the audience and adds: "That's the first time I've used that joke in twenty years." CPR for Dummies gave me my chance to join in the fun and, as you say, to give it the feel of a live performance while offsetting the more intense vignettes.

Q: Speaking of intense vignettes: the novel seems to be a kind of tennis match between Life (Janie and the Church-a-go-go, Ruth, sexuality, Lenny D. etc.) and Death (the horrifying facts about nukes, war, etc). Death is related in factual accounts, yet Life exists only in fictional vignettes. Why is this?

MZ: Good question. I'm not sure I consciously planned it out like that but it sure does mirror my life at times. I'm typically a well-liked, friendly person with a calm demeanor but I'm also the one voted most likely to shatter an illusion. Someone's talking about cell phones? That's my cue to bring up coltan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Eastern Lowland Gorillas. Eating meat? Well, get ready for some slaughterhouse facts. Believe the Obama hype? Don't worry, Mickey Z. is here to tell you about his support for the death penalty and how he voted against single-payer. Factual accounts to offset the fictional vignettes in our life.

Q: Okay, then what about the "oddly" named "Lenny D." On one hand, he's like a zen martial arts master or samurai (except when he's having sex with Janie), quiet, moving little, dispassionate, what "we Americans" would call lazy. On the other hand, when a friend or loved one is attacked or even merely offended (Janie, his grandmother) he becomes a lethal weapon. This is the opposite of the truly violent characters in the book, such as cops beating protesters, sexist construction workers, nasty priests, and of course, those who drop bombs, i.e. all who refuse to "live and let live." What does the character of Lenny D. say about the nature of rightul violence or self defense against mis-used power?

MZ: Your question hits on two important angles here—one overt, the other somewhat below the radar. Firstly, I very consciously made sure no single character served as my surrogate. I infused many of the characters with traits I identify with (or wish I had) but none of them is what, say, Chinaski was to Bukowski. As for Lenny D., he has a sentimental perception of right and wrong but, you could say he lives by the immortal words of Patrick Swayze (as James Dalton in Roadhouse): "Be nice until it's time to not be nice."

Q: In general, at least since the mid-nineteen eighties/early nineties (I'm guessing), American "artists" who receive wide -- or any -- distribution to the public, "create" bland, corporate-approved movies, books and music. Do you agree? If so, why do you think this is?

MZ:A: I'd agree this is true, as you say, in general. I'm old enough to remember pop culture in the pre-cable TV and pre-VHS and pre-Internet days. Sure we had TV and radio but the faster-than-the-speed-of-light technology did not yet exist to completely homogenize the culture so artists weren't creating for a monolithic target audience. This development had to play a role not only in the dumbing down of art but in the dumbing down of artists. Just the other day, I was having conversation about how Bob Dylan was well-versed in and influenced by classical poetry but many who were subsequently inspired by Dylan knew little of his influences. The next generation – influenced by those who were influenced by Dylan – were one more step removed. And so on. Still, having said all that, some film, literature, and music is still being made today. Not enough...but some. Consider this: When reporting on the infamous New York School of abstract expressionist painters in 1947, art critic Clement Greenberg pondered, "What can fifty do against one hundred and forty million?" It wasn't so much an entire population stacked against a band of radical painters that Greenberg was contemplating. Rather, it was 140 million Americans essentially ignoring a movement that would eventually change the face of art. The U.S. population has more than doubled in the fifty-plus years since Jackson Pollock dripped his way onto the cover of Life magazine and there are still plenty of movements being ignored by the majority. In fact, lurking below the one-size-fits-all surface of today's consumer culture, there's a broad range of indefatigable rabble-rousers doing their thing. As Ani DiFranco sings: "Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel, there's a fire just waiting for fuel."

Q: The minority of Americans dubbed "the reading public" prefer, or the Pavlovian Publishers who ring the dinner bell prefer, "realism" in poetry, drama, fiction. But "realism" itself is a device of -- primarily -- 19th century artifice. Kafka, Joyce, Stein, Breton, Woolf, Beckett, Stevens, Burroughs, Pynchon etc., in fact, the majority of late 19th to late 20th century writers attempted to capture a more psychological/unconscious reality based on individual perception. In CPR, the "realism" of the historical facts recounted are questioned, if not outright lampooned by the wild, satiric, romps that occur in the "fictional" sections. What gives? Both with this "new" fad of Tolstoy/Flaubert "realism" -- appropriate for their day, not ours -- and with your satirizing of such alleged "realism" in CPR?

MZ: When I hear the word "realism," I can't help but think of "reality TV."What a progression, huh? Anyway, my idea of reality/realism is more in line with this: A little more than two years ago, a cousin of mine killed himself and I thought, My cousin no longer lives on this planet...but yet the subways are still jammed, bars and restaurants remain full, blogs get updated, Jane still does the laundry every Wednesday, and Joe never misses Sportscenter. Yes, of course life (so-called) goes on with or without us...but at some point that week, I was probably walking around my neighborhood feeling sorry for myself in the heat or maybe contemplating the big trade the Yankees just made. Meanwhile, at that precise moment, my cousin was out in the woods of Pennsylvania with a rope around his neck. Makes me wonder what's happening somewhere (perhaps to someone I know and love) just as I am typing this. It's enough to make you insane. Moral of this story (and every story?): There are no happy endings. In CPR, this concept is manifested as you describe above.

Q:If I could spend a night with any three people, real or imaginary (uh...if I weren't married to my beautiful, wonderful wife, of course...) it would be Mary Shelley, circa 1816; Grace Slick, circa 1967; or Janie, circa -- immediately. Comment?

MZ: That is the strangest compliment I've ever received. I'm flattered you think so highly of Janie and your appraisal helped teach me more about her than I ever knew. As I said earlier, I very consciously made sure no single character served as my surrogate and Janie is the ultimate example of that. She's brimming with characteristics I admire and only a select few traits I possess, but mostly, she's my fictionalized heroine (maybe she's my Cassandra). There were instances where the mere act of typing her dialogue had me smiling ear to ear. Janie is full of contradictions, like any human, but she's also someone finding her way better than most in this insane culture of ours. She nurtures, she heals, she listens, and she speaks her mind freely and clearly. Without the pomposity and pretension of most educated (sic) activists and radicals, Janie is – in her own way - fighting the battles we should all be fighting if we weren't so paralyzed by fear, self-interest, and a modicum of comfort. Plus, Janie is a female and I very much enjoy the company of women and deeply value feminine energy.

Mickey Z. is the author of several books, including THE MURDERING OF MY YEARS, and numerous articles, essays, fictions and poems. He can be reached at http://www.mickeyz.net

Adam Engel, author of Topiary, can be reached at bartlebysamsa65@gmail.com or www.adamengel.com.

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