"[On the eve of the battle of Stones River], both commanders formed similar plans for the morrow: to turn the enemy's right, get into his rear, and cut him off from his base. As the two armies bedded down a few hundred yards from each other, their bands commenced a musical battle as prelude to the real thing next day. Northern musicians blared out "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia," and were answered across the way by "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag." One band finally swung into the sentimental strains of "Home Sweet Home"; others picked it up and soon thousands of Yanks and Rebs who tomorrow would kill each other were singing the familiar words together."

- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pg. 580.

Almost 25,000 soldiers were killed, injured, or taken prisoner in the battle of Stones River, Dec. 31 1862 - Jan. 2, 1863.

A dissent

I recently watched the new movie "The Master" and was totally underwhelmed. Instead of insight into the dismal cult of scientology, American culture, or science fiction, we get a succession of archly significant scenes that neither deepens the one-dimensional characters nor furthers the little plot that exists. This movie contains all the usual gaucheries of contemporary film-making: gratuitous nudity, a confusion of yelling and profanity with dialogue, an inability to say anything concisely, a heavy-handed approach to theme, and overblown, sententious acting. Save your money.

GRADE: D-

I think nothing equals Macbeth.

"Shakespeare's plays appealed to [Lincoln] most. As a boy, he had memorized the soliloquies contained in William Scott's Lessons in Elocution, and in Springfield he owned and frequently read his own copy of Shakespeare's works, but he had never seen Shakespeare performed on the stage until he became President. After that he rarely missed an opportunity. In February and March 1864, at one of the most dangerous periods of the war, he took time off from his duties to see the great tragedian Edwin Booth perform in Richard III, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet.

Once his fondness for Shakespeare led to an embarrassment. In August 1863, after seeing James H. Hackett as Falstaff in Henry IV, he wrote the actor commending his performance and expressing the hope that he would have a chance to make his personal acquaintance when he next performed in Washington. The President went on to say that he had never read some of Shakespeare's plays, but that he had gone over others - mentioning King Lear, Richard III, Henry VIII, Hamlet, and Macbeth - "perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader." "I think nothing equals Macbeth," he added. "It is wonderful." Though the letter was intended to be personal, Hackett printed and distributed it, and newspapers had a field day, criticizing the President as would-be dramatic critic. To Hackett's apology Lincoln replied that the hostile comments "constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life." He added, in one of his most perfectly balanced sentences: "I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it." "

- from David Herbert Donald's Lincoln, p. 569.

Apart from a personal statement by Andrew Sarris

"Ms. Kael's work has been praised as "great...a body of criticism which can be compared with Shaw's" (Times Literary Supplement). She has won a National Book Award. So far as I know, apart from a personal statement by Andrew Sarris, which appeared in The Village Voice as this piece was going to press, the book has received uniformly favorable reviews. The New Republic describes it as consisting of "all peaks and no valleys." None of this is Ms. Kael's fault. It is only symptomatic. The pervasive, overbearing, and presumptuous "we," the intrusive "you," the questions, the debased note of righteousness and rude instruction - the whole verbal apparatus promotes, and relies upon, an incapacity to read. The writing falls somewhere between huckster copy (paeans to the favored product, diatribes against all other brands and their venal or deluded purchasers) and ideological pamphleteering: denouncings, exhortations, code words, excommunications, programs, threats. Apart from the taste for violence, however, which she takes to be a hard, intellectual position, there is no underlying text or theory. Only the review, virtually divorced from movies, as its own end..."

- From Renata Adler's review of a collection of Kael's "criticism", from 1981. With just a few substitutions, this attack can be used against any number of figures whose success depends upon "an incapacity to read" (Toni Morrison springs to mind).