Seinfeldia: How a Show about Nothing Changed Everything

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Benefiting from the initial network apathy that allowed them more creative control, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David created Seinfeld, a sitcom that “commanded the commercial realm like no sitcom before it.” Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s book about a show about nothing, Seinfeldia, is interested in not only the massively successful show but also its continued interaction with the real world. What has resulted is the bizarre titular realm, where holidays like Festivus and people like J. Peterman are simultaneously real and not.

Ms. Armstrong necessarily begins with the show itself, which imitated the real world long before the reverse was true. Here, she makes a strong case for the show’s unique reputation, from the absence of stage directions in its scripts to its pioneering of a single camera, on-location approach to filming. And because an argument between Seinfeld and David about the inclusion of Kramer in the series can only have one outcome, the book streamlines the general narrative, instead adopting a more anecdotal style that succeeds in fleshing out an increasingly bizarre in-between world where Festivus is attacked by Fox News as a threat to Christmas and characters based on real people come to life alongside their real-world inspirations.


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Author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Star Count /5
Format Hard
Page Count 320 pages
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publish Date 2016-07-05
ISBN 9781476756103
Bookshop.org Buy this Book
Issue December 2016
Category Pop Culture
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