Comedienne Liberty tells how to heal hurt through hatred

Monday, October 26, 1998

Comedienne Liberty tells how to heal hurt through hatred

BOOK: Novel illustrates best way to get over love after a
relationship fails

By Cheryl Klein

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Remember that "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry dated a comedienne
whose entire schtick was "Jerry Seinfeld is an asshole" or
something to that effect?

Well now the actress-comedian has written a book about her
real-life boyfriend, Mitchell ­ or, to be painfully clear, her
ex-boyfriend.

Her name is Anita Liberty and the book is "How to Heal the Hurt
by Hating."

If that title is not enough to grab anyone’s attention who ever
had the dubious pleasure of rooming with a first year pre-psych
major, check out the oh-so-honest subtitle: "My boyfriend,
Mitchell, whom I dated for three and a half years, left me for a
woman named Heather, and ­ to get even ­ I have devoted
my entire career to humiliating him in public … Enjoy the
book."

And readers will. Beyond the paperback cover lie 145 pages of
poems, journal entries and vignettes detailing Liberty’s painful
bout of P.M.S. (post-Mitchell syndrome).

The collection is none of the things that true self-help manuals
preach ­ such as being calm, logical and well-adjusted. She
does, however, use "I sentences" ­ but not to covey sensitive
feelings as in "I feel hurt when you shut me out." No, hers are
more like "I don’t even have a goddamned boyfriend."

She’s a poet, alright. Liberty definitely has a way with words,
pairing things down to their simplest (and funniest) forms,
recounting apt anecdotes as metaphors for the healing process
­ such as her venture into aroma-therapy. She’s searching for
just the right candle (shopping for clothes to appease her pain is
too stereotypical), one that gives off eau de "Your Ex-Boyfriend’s
Not Worth Your Time And You’re So Much Better Off Without Him And
Who Cares If He Does Have A New Girlfriend, That Doesn’t Mean He’s
Happy."

Liberty also drags her readers along on blind dates ("We have so
much in common," she says of Bachelor #1. "Like we both have
skin"), to her sister’s bridal shower and to the inevitable
encounter with Heather.

And along the way, no matter how much it is against her humorous
mantra, she sneaks in a few bold truths about The Role of the
Single Female; how much does it suck that she pays twice as much
rent as her married friends, and for a smaller place? Why do her
’20s seem so desolate? She hasn’t married and doesn’t have a car
but she’s lived in three states and has written over a hundred
poems.

A few of those hundred, perhaps, are too generic to be genuinely
cathartic, too repetitive to make the reader anything but thankful
for their brevity. This is not the sort of diatribe that will have
you huddled by the Kleenex box going, "That’s totally how I felt
when Bradley left me for Shannon!" And Liberty’s consistent
bitterness, while refreshing, doesn’t seem quite believable.
Probably because, according to a footnote in the back, "Anita
Liberty is a character created and performed by Suzanne Weber."

So, yeah ­ gasp! ­ Liberty is fictional. Who cares?
Revel instead in her creative use of punctuation, syntax and her
approachable self-effacing, self-righteous tone.

Liberty is in good company, both fictional and real. Other
similarly inspired performance artists include Sandra Tsing Loh,
who is currently performing "Bad Sex with Bud Kemp" and the
seemingly penis-whipped character of Claudia in Dennis Hensley’s
"Misadventures in the (213)." And don’t forget every Lifetime movie
ever made.

But unlike the latter example in the scorned-woman-on-a-rampage
genre, "Heal the Hurt" elevates pettiness to an art rather than
dragging tragedy down to tabloid level.

One of Liberty’s pet peeves is men who tell her she’s beautiful
when she’s angry. But can reviewers tell her she’s really funny
when she’s angry?

So read the book because of that and the following reasons:

€It will probably take you no more than an hour and a half
to read. Two, if you grab coffee and contemplate the exploitation
potential of your own ex.

€It comes with two useful postcards. One says "Not
thinking about you." The other says "Still not thinking about you."
Send them to a hated one today.

BOOK: "How to Heal the Hurt by Hating" by Anita Liberty.
Ballantine Books, $10.95. 145 pages.

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