by Jerry Seinfeld
What we have here is essentially several hours of the NBC sitcom star's stand-up material transcribed and arranged into little subject groupings: dating, fashion, television, aging, parents and so on. Seinfeld's jokes are nearly always pleasant, occasionally whimsical, cleanly and swiftly expressed (that counts for a lot, actually) and totally lacking in bite. He's like a carbonated beverage that releases a perfectly calibrated string of bubbles. (Sample joke: "Now why does moisture ruin leather? Aren't cows outside a lot of the time? When it's raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, 'Let us in! We're all wearing leather!' ")
Even so, 180 pages of stand-up—180 pages of nice stand-up—is not a galvanizing publishing concept. Seinfeld, who's no dummy, seems to acknowledge as much in his introduction. "This book is filled with funny ideas," he notes, "but you have to provide the delivery. So when you read it, remember—timing, inflection, attitude." That's asking for an awful lot, unless the reader happens to be Alan King. I'm not King, and I got cranky. (Bantam, $19.95)
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