"Scruton begins his book with an expert account of the origins of the Tristan story and Wagner's treatment of it. Scruton has absolute command of this material, and he eloquently organizes it around a few central points. As a concise account of the evolution of the Tristan myth, the first two chapters of Scruton's book are unsurpassed... Scruton's deep love of Tristan seems to render him blind toward the inconsistencies of the Wagnerian enterprise and the ruptures in the fabric of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Unfortunately, this blindness undermines Scruton's arguments in the final chapters of the book. In these pages, Scruton uses Tristan to pronounce jeremiads against contemporary culture, attacking (among other things) popular music and pornography. Scruton has important things to say here, and we would take him more seriously if he did not grip so tightly onto the meaning of Wagner's work. Scruton's eloquent and persuasive prose alerts us to ways in which Wagner's music cuts across the grain of contemporary notions about love and sexuality. But the ability of Wagner's work to "speak against" or to "speak across" depends at least in part to ways in which it resists decoding and presents irreconcilable paradoxes. Scruton seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge these qualities, and his work suffers as a result."