Popular Culture Review Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter 2009 | Page 127

BOOK REVIEWS 123 celebrities” (209). Hence, South Park's “satirical challenge to celebrity becomes dismantling at the moment when the shallowness of celebrity is revealed, positioning celebrities” like Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Mel Gibson, Winona Ryder, and Paris Hilton “as empty receptacles only given meaning through reproduction, circulation, consumption . . . public desire,” and nothing more (223). In a postmodern culture where the likes of “celebrities” such as Paris Hilton can generate more headlines than the deaths of American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, South Park's ability to skewer and expose celebrity for the terrible myth it is serves as a significant—and necessary— corrective; and Sturm’s essay explains why this facet of South Park works so well. A number of black-and-white illustrations from the series lend verisimilitude to the essays gathered in Taking South Park Seriously, which also includes a detailed alphabetical list of the specific episodes cited throughout the volume, as well as a guide listing all of the series’s episodes from Seasons 1-11 (1997-2007), and a comprehensive and easy-to-use index. While a conclusionary piece by Weinstock would have been beneficial, as a whole Taking South Park Seriously succeeds in its avowed aim. Indeed, whether the subject is American carnival or celebrity culture in relation to the series, no one—scholar or otherwise—will be able to take South Park less than seriously after careful consideration of Weinstock’s admirable and welcome collection. Anthony Guy Patricia, University of Nevada, Las Vegas The Reptilian Interludes (and a child’s prayer) Ross Talarico Bordighera Press, 2006 If I had the learning (and artistry) of Kenneth Rexroth, I could do historical and literary justice to this extraordinary book. Since he’s no longer with us, I’ll do my best to atone. Here is poetry at its purest: the distilled essence of moments in life, of time and space, and the sheer presence of mystery. Here is the world in me and me in the world—Whitman’s equation between self and universe, but with an emphasis on the cosmic, not the individual. Here too is death, both as painful fact and as absolute denial of immortality, though not of infinity. Here is a voice redolent of Wallace Stevens, Robinson Jeffers, and even Hart Crane, but without a trace of preciousness, self-pity, or delusions of sexual ecstasy. We engage Talarico’s work on three overlapping levels: the personal, the professional, and the ethical. On a personal level, there’s the sheer beauty of the words: “reptilian hiss,” “tiptoe like burglars sleepwalking,” “another shovelful