INTERVIEW: MICHAEL WALSH GOES INSIDE THE DEVIL’S PLEASURE PALACE.

As much as I’ve enjoyed Michael’s writing and spending time with him in person, after immersing myself in first Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and then Fred Siegel’s The Revolt Against the Masses, I was a little weary about sitting down to read another history of “How the Left Was Won.” But Michael has managed to combine a much-needed history of the infamous Frankfurt School, which fled National Socialism in Germany only to import international socialism into the US in following decades, with a fascinating look at how socialism corrupted classical music in the 20th century, drawing upon his role as a music critic for Time magazine and his time spent behind the Iron Curtain in the last years of the Soviet Union. In addition to his history of the Frankfurt School and its corrosive invention of “Critical Theory,” Michael’s book does for the atonal horrors of 20th century classical music what Tom Wolfe did for the double-barreled disasters of modern art and architecture in The Painted Word and From Bauhaus to Our House.

Over at Ed Driscoll.com, I have a 20 minute audio interview and transcript with Michael — read and/or listen to the whole thing, to paraphrase an Insta-leitmotif.