Books: Seinfeld: The Making Of An American Icon

So, what is the deal with this Seinfeld guy? Oppenheimer, whose credits include unauthorized biographies of Martha Stewart and Barbara Walters, doggedly interrogates Seinfeld's childhood pals, ex-girlfriends and business partners in search of an answer. But the only picture he can come up with is of an almost eerily boring individual, an emotional recluse and a relentless workaholic whom a colleague once labeled a robo-comic. The book suffers from a total lack of access to the man and his famous co-stars, as well as from Oppenheimer's egregious sub-tabloid prose--he wouldn't know an elegant phrase if it sued him for libel. "I'm barely interested in my own life," Seinfeld once remarked to a reporter. "I don't know how you could be." If we are to judge by this biography, Jerry had a point. --By Lev Grossman