MAN MEDIUM RARE: Sex, Guns and Other...

MAN MEDIUM RARE: Sex, Guns and Other Perversions of Masculinity by Ian Brown (Plume/Penguin: $11.95; 272 pp.). As the birth of his first child approached, Canadian journalist Ian Brown began to examine contemporary images of masculinity. He visited the set of a porno film, talked to gun enthusiasts and chronicled tacky drinking rituals. He listened to a pretentious academic blame all the world’s problems on males, and watched an otherwise decent man lie shamelessly to impress a woman in a bar. At a meeting of Robert Bly-style men’s group movement, he concluded that the intimate confessions were the product of anonymity, rather than comradeship. Brown doesn’t pretend to have the answers, but he poses some interesting questions about what it means to be male.