From racist rants to spiritual guru? What we learned from Seinfeld star Michael Richards’s autobiography

His career was upended after an abusive onstage tirade, but now the actor best known for playing Kramer has finally told his story. Brace yourself for Larry David, dodgy dressing gowns and extreme religious waffling

For the rest of time, Michael Richards will be known for only two things. One of them is Seinfeld, on which he played Kramer; the other is the notorious 2006 Laugh Factory standup set that ended with him screaming racial abuse at a Black audience member.

Richards has just published his memoir, Entrances and Exits, and both of those things feature, albeit one more prominently than the other. The bulk of the book concerns his time on Seinfeld – celebrity anecdotes, the craft of building Kramer from a two-dimensional bit part into a fully formed character, his determination to be paid $1m an episode – with the uglier stuff hurriedly squished into the end. Look around those, though, and a slightly more complicated picture emerges. Here’s the book, abridged.