Review: Dispatches from the Edge

Dispatches from the Edge by Anderson Cooper
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I WAS TEN WHEN my father died, and before that moment, that slap of silence that reset the clock, I can’t remember much. There are some things, of course—fractals, shards of memory, sharp as broken glass.

Cooper is giving us Dispatches from the Ego of Anderson Cooper, but. He has the experience to do a Dispatches like that by by Michael Herr, but falls woefully short shirking behind poetic metaphor like the above and such statement that sound deep, but really are shallow:

Nothing was certain, but everything was clear.

Well, like he says, he has no feeling:

The more you’ve seen, the more it takes to make you see. Th e more it takes to affect you. That is why you’re there, aft er all—to be affected. To be changed. In Somalia, I’d started off searching for feeling.

These are my honest assessments, and it feels harsh to criticise Anderson at all sense he is laying bare ins inability to articulate his need to individuate aware from his mother Gloria Vanderbilt's NYC posh background, his father's Southern family values while dealing with his brother's suicide and diving past the who, what, when, where or reportage to confront the most difficult: why.

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