Books on "popular" or "mass" cul- ture are nearly as numerous as the formula novels, movies, TV shows, comic strips, popular songs, "pop" paintings, and other manifestations of 20th-century life with which they deal. Some are excellent studies. Others are themselves a kind of "pop" scholarship; these are written according to formula, aimed at the college campus. Sometimes they make good reading, but they often are no more nourishing than spun- sugar candy.
Moreover, f...