""Seinfield will nurse a single joke for years, amending, abridging and reworking it incrementally, to get the thing just so," writes Weiner. "It's similar to calligraphy or samurai," Seinfeld says. "I want to make cricket cages. You know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny, with the doors? That's it for me: solitude and precision, refining a tiny thing for the sake of it.""
"Or, as Seinfeld puts it in the more recent interview above with podcaster Graham Bensinger, he wants to know what time it is, but he wants even more to take the watch apart in order to learn how it works. This has become his life-long quest, in his professional arena of comedy and with his other obsessions as well."
Jerry Seinfeld pursues a philosophical, craft-focused approach to comedy, treating joke-writing as meticulous refinement. He nurses a single joke for years, amending, abridging, and reworking it incrementally to achieve precision. He compares the practice to calligraphy or samurai discipline and describes his ideal as making 'cricket cages'—tiny, precise creations cultivated through solitude. Seinfeld also seeks to understand systems deeply, wanting to take the watch apart to learn how it works. He deliberately places himself in difficult situations within an "appropriate bracket of struggle" and has found guidance in figures such as Marcus Aurelius.
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