Product Description

She is equal parts urban mystic, best friend, and hip observer of the madness around her. As wit, raconteur, and Problem Lady columnist, Cynthia Heimel speaks to the heart of our post-modern angst, and says what needs to be said about the spoken and silent battles between men and women, the problem with mothers, the desperate search for a dress that's not designed for an anorectic teenager, the joy of pet ownership, and more. From the personal to the political and back again, Cynthia Heimel skewers, satirizes, challenges, and champions our ever-strange society -- with the wisdom of a scholar and the passion of one possessed.
"Like Dorothy Parker, Ms. Heimel is an urban romantic with a scathing X-ray vision that penetrates her most deeply cherished fantasies." The New York Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2372059 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-08
• Released on: 1994-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 179 pages

Amazon.com Review
One of Heimel's most trenchant and incisive books: she wrangles with feminism, family values, these modern times, shopping, and the battle of the sexes in her inimitable no-holds-barred assault on complacency.

From Library Journal
It's no surprise that the author of If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet ? ( LJ 4/15/91), Sex Tips for Girls ( LJ 6/15/83), and But Enough About You (S. & S., 1986) has come up with another snappy eyebrow-raising title. Her brief essays here reflect the same satirical feminist wit that graces the pages of the Village Voice and Playboy magazine. Among the weighty issues Heimel tackles are boyfriends ("a woman needs a man like a fish needs a net"), dysfunctional family values ("PBS would be bankrupt if its fund-raisers didn't feature hours of John Bradshaw explaining to sobbing audiences how our families fill us with toxic shame and make it impossible for us to have anything other than lives of agony"), and living in L.A. ("Out here I have a car, and I don't know if anyone in Manhattan knows this, but a car is just a moving, giant handbag!"). Brash, hip, and very, very funny, Heimel is essential for all humor collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/93.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Heimel's new collection takes up where her last one (If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?, 1991) ended: In 36 short pieces previously published in Playboy, the Village Voice, and the Independent, the humorist parades the goofy, smart, obsessive-yet-perceptive persona that many downtown Manhattan- dwellers have come to identify with. But this time, she shows us a little more of her mature, maternal, responsible side before slipping in the news that she's defected for California to write for a sitcom. Maybe that's why she sounds happier and more relaxed. In five pieces that fall under the heading ``Feminist Rants,'' Heimel demonstrates her mastery of the endlessly thorny subject of men: ``A woman needs a man like a fish needs a net,'' she says, beefing up Gloria Steinem's flip 70's slogan that ``A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.'' Times are tougher now than they were in the 70's, and Heimel envies the easy confidence that she's seen lesbians demonstrate: ``I remember only once in my life feeling as content and confident as these women: It was 1979 and I was out of my mind on a combination of Quaaludes and cocaine. This method no longer strikes me as practical.'' But in short pieces on her brief stint as a welfare mother, and in the angry, zingy ``How to Be Creative,'' she tells us how she got tough enough to let her talent shine through, showing us the seatless toilets in the welfare office and all the twisted little jokes and reflections she had along her difficult way. And in many little pieces on shopping (including the buying of deliciously vengeful Christmas gifts) and on life in L.A., as well as in further thoughts on guys, Heimel demonstrates that a good writer can peer over the edge of middle-aged looniness without quite falling in. Funny and smart: a great way for beset urban women to chase the blues. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Hilarious book validates trashy-mouthed babes
Cynthia Heimel has written another great "just say YES" book. Yes to sex, yes to drugs, and yes to rock&roll. Heimel writes what most of us have been thinking all along...that we're not all sweet, shy, moral creatures with perfect blow-dry bobs. Some of us are wild haired, trashy-mouthed girls that just wanna have fun. Heimel tells us how to do it. Be good to your dog, like your kids but give 'em space, treat everyone well but take no crap from anybody...and if that doesn't work, drink and play pool in a smoky gin-joint until you can pick up one of the band members. Heimel's not unsentimental. She writes poignantly about women struggling to raise kids on their own and women that are beginning to hit the end of their babe years. She is giggle-to-yourself funny when writing about (and against) answering machines, fashion, and rich people. I've read all Heimel's books by now and am willing to bribe her to write another. Fix yourself a drink, get under the covers, and enjoy this trashy, funny book.

Funny Urban Rants
Cynthia Heimel's Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-Bye first got my attention in the bookstore because of its title (like most of her books) and the inside material, for the most part, did not disappoint. First of all, this book is funny but it is also, often, bitter in an angry urban way that can remind one of a downtown Dorothy Parker. But, to repeat, it is funny. She does not tackle any surprising issues, instead sticking to family, the battle between the sexes, feminism and L.A. (as only a New Yorker truly can) but she handles them with fresh insights and, once again, humour. A nice collection of pieces.

Better
Very cute stories, clever writing, I laughed out loud. Ms. Heimel came of age in the 60's and 70's, but writes about the 90's for singles...or anyone who needs to commiserate about jobs, apartments, friends, dogs, relationships....I recommend this book if you could use a laugh.