I’ll pick up again this week, but before I do, I want to say something about Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity chef, author and TV star who committed suicide in France last week.
I was sitting on a bed in a hotel in Montevecchia, Italy — on the fringes of Italy’s insanely scenic Lake District — when a headline flashed across my tablet. Bourdain had died at the age of 61.
As an occasional watcher of Bourdain’s CNN show, Parts Unknown, I found myself in step with just about everyone else who thought that a Bourdain suicide was inconceivable. Not the robust, I’ll-eat-anything world traveler who drank and ate his way across the globe, sometimes visiting places few of us voluntarily would venture. On a recent show, Bourdain proclaimed Glasgow, by no means the most exotic of his many destinations, as one of his favorite cities. He didn’t convince me, but the guy earned points for going against the grain.
In a foodie culture in which restaurants have become exalted Meccas of culinary worship, Bourdain seemed like a guy with his feet firmly planted on the ground, someone who held little truck with places that serve meticulously assembled, nibble-sized portions on oversized plates, high-priced oases of pleasure on otherwise arid dinnerware deserts. There was more than a hint of the working man about him.
Better yet, Bourdain seemed as if he’d be fun to hang out with, something to which those who knew him attested in various startled post-death reflections on his life as America’s explorer-in-chief. My liking of Bourdain also may have had parochial roots; he grew up in Leonia, New Jersey, not far from the northern Jersey town where I was raised. Another Jersey boy. I knew the accent.
I have no idea what demons haunted Bourdain, but I wondered whether those demons were encouraged to flap their serrated wings by too much air travel, too many unfamiliar hotel beds, too many ports-of-call, and too much cultural bombardment. Bourdain said he liked to move, and he seemed to have turned his life into a form of cross-cultural aerobics.
Cliche has it that travel broadens one’s horizons, which — of course - is true. But it also can kick the shit out of you, challenging your body clock with time shifts that sometimes require merciful assistance from pharmaceutical sleeping aids.
Of course, Bourdain and his crew made it all look easy. There he was walking the streets of this or that city, tapping the wisdom of top local experts or long-standing friends, sharing drinks and meals. He so frequently pronounced these meals as “delicious” that I wondered whether the guy ever ate anything he didn’t enjoy.
He did. In interviews, Bourdain talked about being a guest in various cultures and how he learned to respect those cultures by sharing local cuisines, always without queasy judgment or moral censure. He once even ate — begin grimacing now — unwashed warthog anus.
I’m all for experiencing cultural diversity and I’d like to think of myself as fairly open to new experiences, but if someone offered me unwashed warthog anus I’d politely refuse and ask whether they might be able to dig up some chips instead.
I wondered, too, whether all the travel and adventurous eating had taken the place of the rush that Bourdain once got from heroin, part of a young man's foray into a world of drugs that he openly discussed.
But I’m no psychologist and I won't play one here.
All I’ll say is that Bourdain’s suicide serves as a powerful reminder that what we see on TV should be taken cum grano salis; i.e., with a large grain of salt that Bourdain probably would have encouraged us to enjoy without guilt.
In the end, Bourdain reminded us of an important truth: We do not know the people who turn up on screens in our living rooms any more than we should presume to know or understand those who turn up on bigger screens at the movies.
There’s only one way really to get to know someone; that’s eye-ball-to-eye-ball over time -- and even that isn't always enough.
I’m going to miss the Bourdain I saw on TV, but when I watch reruns of his program, I’ll know that I’m not seeing the whole person. We never do.
Like you, I’m not the same person at 2 p.m. on a sunny afternoon as I am on those occasions (fortunately infrequent) when I awaken at 4 a.m. abandoned by sleep as my mind restlessly stumbles through thickets of anxiety or regret, things unsaid or undone.
I’m saddened that Bourdain has so abruptly vanished from the public scene; I’m also saddened by the thought that Bourdain, a man who could accept all manner of challenge and diversity, might finally have faced one he couldn’t fully accommodate: himself.
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