NONFICTION text by SIMON LIBERATI artwork by GIDEON RUBIN simon liberati, an award-winning french writer and journalist, examines life and society through a darkly romantic lens. His works include jayne mansfield 1967 (2011), california cirls (2016), and eva (2015), based on his own love story with his wife eva ionesco. Love ceases to be a source of anguish for me only when I begin to see it as a fiction, a story. A fiction may be controlled in the sense that it may be narrated and modified in reality at each instant, in ways most pleasant to the senses. Being a writer — and I have been one since long before I published my first novels, around the age of 40 — I think my love stories have brought me mostly novelistic joys. As I lived through them, I would think, “This will be funny to tell” or “Incredible, she…