Ted L. Nancy and the limits of eccentricity tolerance

The online edition just has Jerry Seinfeld's text, because the letters appear in fascimile and the Guardian website doesn't tend to post accompanying graphical material. No mention in it of the widespread suspicion that Nancy is in fact Seinfeld himself. JS says he finds them laugh out loud funny. They are funny, but I am more taken with a more melancholic reading, in which Ted L. Nancy's project acts as the good-humoured attempt of an everyman-who-doesn't-understand-the-world (is there a word for this?) to empirically clarify the rules of our society. As an earlier piece in the Guardian puts it:

Would it be all right if he dressed as a giant shrimp while gambling at the blackjack tables of the Flamingo Hilton Inn in Las Vegas, for example? (The answer was no, by the way: "We feel that because of the high level of activity created by the outfit, it might be too distractive.") Could he travel on a Greyhound bus dressed as a slab of butter, for professional reasons? (Yes.) Or on a Hawaiian airline dressed as a rotting radish? (No, although judging by recent reports, it is not certain that the security screeners would have noticed.)

They're not all about dressing up in stupid outfits though. I like the ones about personal medical problems more - the chronic BO sufferer's request for a reservation a seafood restaurant met with the most considered of responses ("Accordingly, and although I very much appreciate your consideration of other guests in not wanting to offend them due to your particular condition, your suggestion to seat and serve yourself in our dumpster area is simply not an option.")

I think they will make an excellent coffee table book, anyway.