Place for us Book

Appropriately enough for the subject matter, this essay is a star turn. D. A. Miller's lusciously stylish language, his wittily allusive prose, dances gracefully between autobiographical musings and interpretive panache. Even as Miller illuminates the false hopes of Broadway optimism and critiques the (hetero)normativizing momentum of musical plots and characters, he also animates the desire and abandon of the golden age musical, the raucous belt of Ethel Merman (whose piscine androgyny he explores) and the melancholy longings of the boy Louise in Gypsy. In Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style, Miller established the ironic reserve and sophisticated revenges of the detached narrative voice as the envied hallmarks of queer self-containment and coded superiority. Broadway's satisfactions and distractions are broader, but it is that investment in performative femininity that Miller reveals as its greatest pleasure. An unexpected twist at the end of this tour de force reading is Miller's disappointment in more recent musicals (La cage aux folles, Falsettosthat deal with homosexuality directly--and thus confiningly--rather than dispersing queer allures throughout the spectacle. It is a pleasure to read with him and think with him. This is a show tune to which I would sing along.