REVIEW #9: TALES FROM THE CAFE
26/04/2023RAMSAY ART PRIZE 2023
04/07/2023With the Falling of the Dusk
By Stan Grant
Harper Collins Publishers 2021
Having just finished re-reading Stan Grant’s fascinating chronicles of his adventures as a correspondent for CNN, I decided to review it because I found it thought-provoking and enlightening. His, at times, tense and terrifying account of entering the Cyclops’ cave to satisfy his commitment to reporting what he found in those far-flung places, was interwoven with his take on life in general and those major political events that have a lasting impact on us nationally and globally. It enabled me to catch a glimpse into a world I have come to disparage in recent years, namely the world of journalism.
One of the things that will strike you as you read this book is the vast knowledge Stan Grant brings to his experience through his wide-ranging reading, something that aroused in me a great respect for his sincere search for the truth in very complicated situations. (How many books can consider the writings of Thucydides, Shakespeare, John Adams, Albert Camus, Stalin and his henchman, Molotov, Hitler, Hegel, Kim Jong Un, General Macarthur and Hannah Arendt, just to mention some whose policies and philosophies he raised, as he tried to make sense of all he saw.) Moreover, he has an insatiable curiosity and is a powerful storyteller which provides a strong foundation for someone who loves words, not just for the sake of words, but for their true historical, sociological and philosophical meaning. Stan is a man who doesn’t gloss over anything. He reads everything he can and ruminates on it to glean everything it can teach him about his assignment, going far beyond those parameters to the way that relates to the wider world, drawing lessons from his comparisons across both time and land masses. Stan wants to connect the dots. To make sense of the chaos. One can’t help but feel his experience as an Indigenous Australian, through the ongoing impact of colonization, is a strong motivating factor, spurring this fearless search for meaning, that becomes more urgent, as he observes warring factions fighting for the supremacy of their ideology and identity. He admits he was metaphorically shackled to his history, an allusion to early life in this British colony that immediately evokes those shocking images of groups of Indigenous men, shackled together. This history, he described as the ‘poison in the blood’ of every Indigenous Australian’s identity.
Despite all he has experienced and seen, he has not allowed the cruelty and oppression he has witnessed to taint his willingness to see the good that shines through in the ordinary folks he works with and meets in places like China, North Korea, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. (He has literally stood outside Ben Laden’s house! Imagine that.) Yet he can still write that even ‘(i)n the worst places, I have seen the glory of the human spirit.’ Nevertheless, after seeing the ‘poisoned and parched’ land of North Korea and the ‘headless bodies … dumped in the town square’ and ‘severed heads…left on doorsteps’ in places like Swat Valley (where the town square was renamed Slaughter Square), he admits such experiences ‘have given him nightmares.’
In the end, he concludes that, ‘(t)o survive, we need to look for the little moments of joy, those moments when, if you like, the light of God shines.’ In short, let love and joy lead us not hate and a dour spirit. It is telling that the Taliban stopped the music in Afghanistan. In contrast, it was often music that saved Stan and his companions in the long, lonely hours away from home and family. Remarkably, (and ironically), it was in Afghanistan that he picked up a guitar and started playing ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ and he was joined by the store owner, picking out the tune on a rubab, and the love of music took them beyond the cruel and murderous surroundings where, for a moment in time, Stan felt he was ‘redeemed by the pure glory of being human.’ These few observations barely scratch the surface of this book. Please pick it up and read it. You won’t regret it . . . especially if you’d like to dig more deeply into the soil of our human condition and try to work out how we got to this point and where we can go from here.