I heard Seinfeld not that long ago on Mark Maren's podcast, and I was very, believe it or not,

eager to hear that interview because the two of them, Marin and Seinfeld, are opposite

comedians in many ways. Maron is a very messy comic, lays all his emotions out on a slab. He constructs comedy

out of riffing about his problems, and he very ostentatiously uses comedy as a form of therapy.

Whereas Seinfeld, he is often called, perhaps backhandedly, a great technical comedian, a great craftsman.

He has his immaculately constructed jokes, and he delivers them with extraordinary confidence,

and there's something vacuum-sealed about him. He gets on stage and compare him to Merrin,

or compare him to, you know, Richard Pryor or so many of the great

comedians, you don't really know who is there. And he very carefully has cultivated an image of

someone who does not have demons, does not have inner turmoil. He's not the sad clown like so many

comedians are. Throughout his interviews, throughout this show even, he is very

resistant to the idea that comedy can or should be anything beyond just funny. Comedy is not something

that is ideological. Comedy is not something to burden the audience with your problems. It should

just be funny, and it exists

in the space of being funny. And this also goes against another impulse that he has, which is he

wants to be the guy who, like, deconstructs comedy. He's always talking about, like, why a joke

works. He loves to take it apart and look at the insides, just like he would, you know, under the

hood of his car. So he loves thinking about, you know, under the hood of his car.

So he loves thinking about, you know, why does a punchline work?

And yet he seems unable to accept a joke as anything beyond just a joke.

This seems contradictory to me and, you know, is kind of the only thing that I find interesting

about him.

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