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W O R D S | review
More out of convenience than interest in on-location research, I bought my copy of Jerry Oppenheimer’s new unauthorized biography of Jerry Seinfeld in the mostly Italian south shore town of Massapequa, the burg where New York’s still-young comic laureate grew up, went to school and delivered Newsdays to neighbors from his beloved red Schwinn. My copy was the last one in the store’s center display, two days after the book hit the street, and, according to a Barnes and Noble salesperson, they’d already burned through upwards of three stacks. I wasn’t surprised: Not since the stand-up days of Woody Allen has a comedian uninterested in cashing in on his religion’s staid jokes managed to make such prominent use in his act of regional and cultural behaviors. (Remember: Stereotypical "Jewish" humor, as it’s known, didn’t reward insouciant irony and neuroticism; it spotlighted bold shlemiels who liked to whoop it up.) Watching reruns of early Seinfeld provides ample evidence of this new blend of humor. The show didn’t feature the overtly crass, overtly by-Jews-for-Jews borsch-belt gaffs of Jackie Mason and Sid Caesar. It instead offered accessible, meticulously honed sentences on existential "dilemmas" and the banality of the everyday that if performed by another comedian of another culture would have still, as they say in comedy clubs, killed. All that and Seinfeld’s cocktail of slick flippancy, Sephardice-eye smirks, and sarcasm that constantly reminds us: Yes, I’m from Long Island, but that’s just a part of why I’m funny. According to Oppenheimer, a former tabloid writer who pens shlocky unauthorized biographies for a living (former victims include Martha Stewart, Bill Clinton and Barbara Walters), that affable blend is both why Seinfeld hit it big and why the Massapequa Barnes and Noble is not the only bookstore in America selling out their stock of this new bottom-feeding tell-all. Seinfeld was and remains clean enough, generic enough, to work the nation from the stages of network television and still seem to people outside the Tri-State area like that wise-ass Jew from New York they once met. On stage, he’s smart but unacademic; attractive yet mildly awkward; friendly but acerbic. In short, the kind of guy you’d like on your side because to oppose him seems wrong. Oppenheimer, however, has written a trashy, barely readable narrative filled with salacious facts and casual interviews with ex-girlfriends and estranged college pals that verges on arbitrary. He’s pandered. And he’s done so in sloppy, overwrought, and at-times egregiously foul prose made of unclear run-on sentences filled with phrases like "ripped [such and such] a new asshole" and Yiddish expressions like "boubkus" that go undefined for people without access to the Second Avenue Deli. Are you interested in to whom Seinfeld lost his virginity? That he was a fairly sensitive boy before having to suck it up to live a show-biz life? That he experimented with Scientology like many easily led L.A. entertainers in the 1980s? That he’s obsessed with hygiene, controlling in matters of the heart and business, is non-confrontational and in love with Porches, is an addicted flosser and commitment-phobe who only recently became a father in middle age and didn’t drop a so-called "nerdy" appearance until his 20s? That he has had numerous male friends who are black? (This fact is beaten by Oppenheimer like a dead equine, both to sensationally imply Seinfeld is perhaps bisexual — something that a) isn’t proved at all; and b) wouldn’t be important even if it was — and to suggest he compartmentalizes his relationships and believes his loved ones each, like cast members of a sitcom, fulfill a certain role and can be replaced.) Unauthorized biographies are nothing new to the publishing landscape, to be sure. But to take someone you admire (Oppenheimer is apparently one of Seinfeld’s devoted fans) and turn his relatively normal life upside down, to sensationalize it with HarperCollins’ support for entertainment purposes, without authorization or the help of your subject’s confidants, is a mean-spirited waste of everyone’s time and money. Jerry Seinfeld isn’t Martha Stewart or Bill Clinton (two people who actually do suffer from excessive public intrigue for substantial doubts about their morality). He’s by all accounts a very clean guy who happens to have an incredible talent for thinking clearly about what makes nonsense nonsense and who burst on the stand-up scene with that shtick at an incredibly fortuitous time — post-disco, when tons of nightclubs turned to comics to keep their businesses profitable, and in the nascent days of cable TV, which considered stand-up comics a low-cost form of entertain for a growing, youthful audience. The fact is Seinfeld remains one of this country’s most celebrated comics despite only appearing at the moment in syndicated reruns most people have seen more than once (stay tuned for news about his upcoming film, Comedian). The reason? Quality. Seinfeld, as Oppenheimer implies, may have received the salesmanship gene from his father, Kal, a lifetime peddler of trinkets and custom-made signs, but somewhere along the line he also absorbed a strong sense of self-discipline as a writer, editor and observer of social behavior who wants and knows how to make people laugh. That’s the real biography of Jerry Seinfeld: the story of a thoughtful craftsman who carved out for himself a niche of which he can be proud. And after the appearance of this excuse for reportage, which wouldn’t even cut it as an E! Channel True Hollywood Story, it’s one Seinfeld deserves to see realized in his lifetime. Adam Baer, a PopPolitics editor, grew up minutes from Massapequa, worked a Newsday paper route, still owns a red Schwinn, and has written comedy. Related Sites |
