Vivek Kaul: The Seinfeld Strategy—or why MS Dhoni is still the boss

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A question I get asked frequently—just last week, in fact—is how to improve one’s writing. The answer is simple.

To write better, read more and write more. As Hanif Kureshi, one of my favourite writers, says in his latest book Shattered: “Reading and writing go hand in hand." This answer leaves most people disappointed given that it sounds as simple as it does. It also leaves the person asking the question with the feeling that I am holding something back, that I have a formula that I do not want to reveal.

That I do not want to increase competition in a field that is not really monetarily very rewarding. Or that I am a generally insecure person who can’t see other people coming up. It’s nothing like that.

  So, I have decided that from now on I will not answer this question in such a simple way. I will make my answer complicated and convoluted. In the process, one day when I rise to my level of incompetence as a writer, I will be ready to be hired as a consultant.

And so, I will talk about what is now known as the Seinfeld Strategy. For those who do not know their stand-up comedy, Jerry Seinfeld has been one of the most popular stand-up comics in the last few decades. (Okay, for you Indian Zoomers, he is the Zakir Khan of American stand-up but not Samay Raina because he doesn’t swear on stage.) Seinfeld also starred and co-wrote the superhit sitcom Seinfeld, in which he played a fictitious version of himself.

The story goes that many years ago a young stand-up comic named Brad Isaac ran into Seinfeld at a club. Isaac asked Seinfeld if he had any tips for young comics. This is how the conversation seems to have gone.