Venus Rising

Film & BooksIssue: Capricorn 08 - The Career Issue

Dispatches from the Edge

Though Anderson Cooper has reported on many natural and political disasters across the globe, his response to Hurricane Katrina is what made him famous. In his recent memoir, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival, he asks us to take a moment and consider how our personal experiences have shaped our professional choices.

For Cooper, the loss of two family members stimulated his work as a journalist. When he was 10, his father died unexpectedly. Then, in his third year of college his brother committed suicide. His grief became the driving force of his professional pursuits. Cooper explained that upon his graduation from college, he asked his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, what he should do for work. Her response was:

“Follow your bliss,” she said, quoting Joseph Campbell.  I was hoping for something more specific – “Plastics,” for instance.  I worried I couldn’t “follow my bliss” because I couldn’t feel my bliss; I couldn’t feel anything at all. I wanted to be someplace where emotions were palpable, where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside. I needed balance, equilibrium, or as close to it as I could get. I also wanted to survive, and I thought I could learn from others who had. War seemed like my only option.

The news Cooper gravitates toward, the stories he shares throughout his memoir, capture that urge for survival. He acknowledges that the more sadness he saw, the more success he felt.

What sustains Cooper’s memoir is that he does not over dramatize. He does not degrade. He simply demands that we look deeper at human behavior. He wants the reader and all others to be accountable for the consequences of their choices. His guarded optimism asserts that we are all bonded by loss, and that we cannot shrink away from overcoming tragedy, for pain is the human experience regardless of class, race, or gender.