On Anthony Bourdain

With the release of the new Anthony Bourdain documentary, just about every website that covers culture at all had a reviewer check it out and weigh in a bit on the fascinating career and popularity of Bourdain and, inevitably, the abiding mystery of his suicide. Well, I haven't seen the movie, but I read damn near every one of those reviews (I'm a reading addict, and reading about culture at least keeps me away from the no-good rabbit hole of online political commentary for a little while.) And I saw most of his episodes, so naturally I want to take a stab at the whole Bourdain thing too. My personal theory centers on two core points: his disposition to needing peak or maximum experiences and his indulgence in punk-adjacent nihilism. Do these "explain" his suicide? No. Unless someone leaves a note there's never any explanation, and, who knows, maybe that doesn't even tell the whole story. And, of course, there's always good old-fashioned depression, whose chemical machinations can be quite severe. But, still, the mind does wonder.

1. Bourdain's tagline was that "he was hungry for more." Well, he was, until he wasn't. At some point more just doesn't work anymore. His shows were filled with more: more booze; more fascinating, even dangerous, locations; more edgier and outsidery people; more elevated culinary experiences. Now, he proved himself an excellent interviewer of ordinary people and he cherished humble street food--that meat "on a stick" or in "tube form" he raved about. Still, think about how much outright binging he did on the show. Recently I made it a hobby of seeing how many of his partners in crime ended up in rehab. There were the Joe Beef guys in Montreal. Sean Brock in Charleston, who was featured in a few episodes, most memorably shit-faced in a Waffle Shop after hours. Zamir might have gone on the wagon himself. God knows he and Tony drank an ocean of vodka. Now, it was definitely enjoyable to watch Tony embrace full-bore hedonism. He was sort of our hero or martyr in an age of creeping Puritanicalism. I like a good semi-binge myself, for sure, but I would often think when watching about, how, if Bourdain was the cool travel guy, the truth is that I travel more like the uncool Rick Steves: A nice mix of culture with cafe sitting, having a glass of wine and watching the people. Then some more sights and a good dinner in the evening. Basically, you can't keep up the intensity like Bourdain did. I read that in his time between episodes he was pretty low key. But there was always going to be another episode where he would see more, adventure more, eat more, and drink more. There's a good chance he just wasn't so "hungry for more" anymore. Now, one wonders why he didn't simply quit, get a place in a hip non-urban area and write books. This would have meant more time with his daughter for sure. But he just couldn't do it, I guess. In fact, he was going in the other direction, falling in love with a high-maintenance, really out-there Italian actress. 

2. So, some things just aren't sustainable. That includes one's attitude or philosophy. Basically, Bourdain was a Hunter S. Thompson guy and a punk rock guy. Thompson was brilliantly funny with his drug-fueled hyper-jaundiced view of humanity and society. Sort of the alter ego to the peace and love crowd. He was an excellent writer, and a true outsider, uninterested in kissing the asses of either the counterculture or the establishment, as it was called. He also committed suicide. There was a lot of Thompson in Bourdain's voice overs. He had a way with a cynical aside or a pretty nasty putdown, usually of a mainstream food celebrity, that was amusing. It was his shtick. The question though, how much is shtick, and how much is an actually bleak view of life? This definitely is a question about the whole punk movement. How much of the nihilism was play acting and how much was real? A lot was the former. Now there is a place for the latter, which is why lots of good art emerged from the punk movement. The Clash are any interesting case. They sort of play acted nihilism and presented a proper punk look and sound at the start, but as time progressed they were simply true to themselves as musicians and people and developed a very inclusive sound and their own type of punk idealism. It's clear that Bourdain had a sensitive, humanist side. His interviews with all different types of people were marvels of human respect. It's amazing that his show succeeded where traditional journalism often fails, precisely because of the human quality. But maybe he was one of those who constantly felt he needed to undercut his idealistic expressions with a dose of self-correcting bleakness, absurdly considered by many to be synonymous with "realism." The truth is that you can't survive and thrive in this world without a fundamentally optimistic perspective. Did Bourdain take the bleak shit more seriously than he should have? I don't know, but as I mentioned in the opening to this refelction, as someone who derived countless hours of pleasure from work, I'm just naturally inclined to ponder these things. Of course, maybe my wondering is less about him than about the choices I've made in my own life to make it happy and sustainable. Probably. So, thank you, Tony, for being the kind of person who gets a guy thinking.