Man, O, Man- John Kasson's Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man

It was in the early 1990's that I first read John Kasson's Rudeness and Civility. At that point, I told myself that I wanted to pick up a copy of his book on Coney Island, Amusing the Millions. I still have not gotten a copy of that book. But when Micawber Books in Princeton went out of business, I did pick up a highly discounted copy of Kasson's Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. I am glad that I did. Kasson has written an excellent book dealing with the topic of masculinity in America at the turn of the century.

There is little in Kasson's book that is truly novel in terms of historiography or methodology. Kasson tells the now familiar story of the redefinition(s) of masculinity and manhood that took place at the start of the twentieth-century. What makes the book remarkable is that Kasson tells the story well. Through a study of Ernest Sandow (think early 20th century Arnold Schwarzenegger), Houdini, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Kasson is able to forcefully illustrate the shift from a Victorian model of masculinity to a modern one. The tensions of white masculinity in the early 20th century are well seen in the lives of these men or their fictional creations.

Kasson's book has several weaknesses. First, the book has a tendency to wander from the subject at hand. Kasson can't seem to resist bunny trails that have seemingly little to do with the subject at hand. The saving grace is that these bunny trails are very interesting. So. Kasson's wandering mind is easily forgiven. More troubling is the fact that it may be hard for Kasson to defend the subjects for his study. Why include a fictional character like Tarzan but not a real life man like TR? Further, Kasson does not give enough discussion of the role that religion played in this new defining of manhood. This is especially strange in light of the fairly abundant literature about muscular Christianity at the turn of the 20th century. Still, these are not major flaws. In the end, Kasson has written a book that should be of interest to both academic and popular audiences.