You may adore Clum, but I am always irritated and surprised by the number of factual errors I find in his books (no, I can't cite them off the top of my head, as it's been some years since I've read any of them--never went back for a second read once I started spotting errors). Given that he was on the Duke faculty and that his scholarly books are from good university presses, I was both sad and angry to find I could not assume he or his editors had done a solid job of fact-checking. So, proceed with caution--if you find his theories and analyses useful, good (I didn't--they seemed very simplistic to me), but if you are thinking of citing any of his representations of factual information, I'd advise finding a back-up source to verify.
I love the Miller book. It is sui generis, as others have suggested, a kind of early queer theory cum personal narrative about musical theatre and queer identity, but fascinating on its own terms. And I found his analysis of Gypsy's central place in queer musical fandom very intelligent and useful. |
