Anthony Bourdain Biography Gives Unvarnished Account of a Turbulent Life

The New York Times

Anthony Bourdain would have hated for the spell checker to change his surname to Boursin, a cheese lacking any culinary shine or credibility.

It’s a surprise that the autocorrect doesn’t suggest his name first. Bourdain: He’s hot, he’s sexy, and he’s dead, as Rolling Stone magazine said of Jim Morrison, in a 1981 cover that became famous.

Since Bourdain committed suicide in France in 2018, there has been a steady trickle of books, documentaries, television specials and magazines about the life and career of the chef and TV presenter.

On social media, he’s ubiquitous, in the form of old videos in which he explains how to make a Negroni, or blasts the use of the phrase “from farm to table.” There are plenty of poignant Bourdain tattoos fluttering across the planet.

A new biography, “Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain” by Charles Leerhsen, is gaining attention. It’s a book that shows the hardcore side of the biography in more detail than anything we’ve read about him.

The author talks about prostitutes, a lot of prostitutes, night-long adventures and rumors about affairs with other personalities in the world of gastronomy.

It also talks about the use of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and Viagra. Offers accurate and disturbing details about Bourdain’s suicide. Her heroin addiction is reported. As well as the coldness with which he often treated many people who loved him and worked with him.

An earlier book, “Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography” (2021), compiled by Laurie Woolever, served as a sort of official product of Bourdain Industries. A dignified but boring treatment.

He prioritized testimonials from celebrities from the world of gastronomy, television and journalism who pontificated over the biography and tried to unravel what made that magnificent and erudite pagan beast, with its chiseled jaw, work, and what took him to the couch.

Leerhsen’s book, on the other hand, shows many people who tried to join Bourdain on the couch, preferably without pants, and therefore offers more adrenaline and seems more faithful to reality.

Most human beings have more desires than opportunities in life. Those whom the gods wish to destroy are given both desire and opportunity in equal measure.

“Down and Out in Paradise” reminded me, in some ways, of Albert Goldman’s sensational biography of Elvis Presley in 1981. Leerhsen relies heavily on anonymous sources, for example.

But his aim is not to discredit or minimize the value of the man he is subject to. His admiration for Bourdain is almost always apparent. It is not easy to say whether Bourdain would have liked the book. But in any case I imagine I would have admired the author’s courage.

“Down and Out in Paradise” isn’t the most subtle thing you’ve ever read. Leerhsen was executive editor of Sports Illustrated magazine and his previous books include biographies of Ty Cobb and Butch Cassidy. His book on Bourdain sounds like a mass-market rock star biography.

I would have loved it if I was 17. The author talks extensively about Bourdain’s anguish, his instinctive distrust of authority, his personal cult of outsider heroes like Hunter Thompson, Iggy Pop, and William Burroughs.

My current self, who prefers wine to fizzy drinks, would like Leerhsen to have more to say about things like: a) the elite and popular food worlds before and after Bourdain; b) the way Bourdain walked a moral tightrope between the conventions of travel journalism and those of objective reporting, which is a considerable feat for a wealthy white man who wore skin-tight jeans; and c) the feeling that he was at the forefront of a new kind of American masculinity, even more so than many of the actors who symbolize it. What we had in it was a stray cat, not a house cat.

But you can’t have everything. Leerhsen sacrifices weight for speed.

He follows Bourdain from his suburban New Jersey childhood — his parents had frustrated bohemian leanings — to Vassar University, where he studied to accompany the girlfriend who would become his first wife. Study didn’t appeal to him, but cooking did, the pirate side of cooking, and he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, at the time a place completely tied to tradition.

He worked in restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and later in New York, notably at the daring French restaurant Les Halles, and there he earned his first combat scars. He smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and his ability to absorb alcohol and drugs was immense.

Bourdain was slow to blossom. He published his first novel at age 39. He studied, with no satisfaction, with editor Gordon Lish, before writing the article that changed his life.

“Don’t Eat Before You Read This Article: A New York Chef Reveals Business Secrets” appeared in The New Yorker magazine in April 1999. The impact of the article, in those days when the internet was not yet dominant, is hard to fathom. be exaggerated: the day after the text was published, news trucks from the TV networks were planted in front of Les Halles.

The article should have been published in the New York Press, an alternative weekly, but the publication accepted the text and decided not to run it. The article in the New Yorker, in which Bourdain sharpened his teeth on the reckless practices of restaurants, led directly to the best seller “Kitchen Confidential” and everything else that followed, particularly the increasingly well-produced television shows.

Maturity made Bourdain a man more worthy of his looks; he had the kind of face that inspired women to study him with almost Talmudic reverence. He also matured as a presenter; His programs have improved, become bolder and more complex.

Bourdain had a million opportunities to sell himself and get rich. But there are no knife sets or a chain of airport bistros bearing his name.

“Once you visit Cambodia, you’ll spend the rest of your life wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death,” wrote Bourdain in “A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines” (2002).

After reading “Down and Out in Paradise,” any reader will want to burn Bourdain’s laptop and cell phone. The book reveals that he had a Google alert to inform him of any mention of his name. He would get notifications about it in real time, to feed his ego.

We are also told that he Googled hundreds of times the name of Italian actress Asia Argento — with whom he had a torrid and confusing affair — in the three days before her death, after she had shaken him by appearing in public with another man. .

Text messages between them are available in the book. “You were irresponsible to my heart,” wrote Bourdain, before hanging himself. The last website he visited was a prostitution service, writes Leerhsen, although he apparently died alone.

“A lot of things have to go really well in your life before you feel as miserable as Anthony Bourdain did in his late 60s — that is, before you can put yourself in a position where you have so much to lose,” writes Leerhsen. . “In Tony’s case, it took decades for him to reach a height he could fall from.”

There’s an old Hollywood joke that the movie “Gandhi” was a hit in the city because Gandhi was everything people there wanted to be: thin, tanned and ethical.

Bourdain — thin, tanned (he was addicted to indoor tanning), and mostly ethical — is getting closer to secular sanctity. The book is not limited to lighting candles in devotion to him, but is also dedicated to tarnishing his image a little. I doubt it will be the final word on the subject.