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Kerr and Rothstein

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More Ruminations

By Sarah Kerr
Posted Thursday, March 11, 1999, at 6:11 PM ET

Dear Ed,

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Do the books you're reading and the movies you're watching all have to do with Kubrick? I'll keep my eyes peeled for your take on him in the Times. Your comparison of the dialogue form to newspaper writing makes a lot of sense, especially from the high-pressure deadline point of view. Then again, at least as a critic the role you're playing is fairly well marked out. In this week's context we're hybrid writer-people, which is kind of a weird thing to be. But enough with this self-referentiality. If I'd been thinking this morning I would have included excessive self-referentiality on the list of things to avoid in a dialogue; from now on, I promise it will be.

Meanwhile, I'm sorry our time has expired because all week long I was looking for a way to talk to you about music, which you write about so passionately. And I meant to ask this morning if you think any worse of Frank Lloyd Wright because his masterpiece, Falling Water, is falling apart. I'm afraid I do--just a teeny tiny bit. (Have you been in the place? It's awe-inspiring but frustrating. In addition to the sagging concrete, many of the ceilings are uncomfortably low, like it was built for three-quarter-size people, and the water is really, really loud.)

Maybe you can mull it over for the next time we meet? I hope that will be soon.

All best,

Sarah

P.S. A couple of people have written asking about the murdered Mexican girls. The story, which I read in an AP brief last week, is that since 1993, an official count of 100 and as many as 193 Mexican young women have been murdered in the town of Ciudad Juarez, right across the border from El Paso. A majority of these girls worked assembling parts for export at maquiladoras, which would seem to make the deaths a labor issue and a NAFTA issue as well as a violence issue. The case happened to come up last week because U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman met with her Mexican counterpart. He promised to investigate fully--but there's no doubt that getting to the bottom will be a daunting and sinister task, not least because the police themselves could be involved.