Such a brilliant storyteller. Loved his shows that took us all over the world. Heartbreaking that he took his own life. He seemed so happy with Asia Argento and his new life committed to health and wellness through jiu jitsu. You just never know. How awful for pal Eric Eipert who found his body. How does one get past something like this?
His The Layover episode in San Fran is one for the ages. Same with Rome.
I’m not usually one for celebrity death posts, but Anthony did resonate with me as a philosopher of food and life. May we all find enough joy in our existence and passions to carry us forward!
Very sad. By all appearances he had the best job in the world. Goes to show how little we know about depression - if reports of suicide are true.
The Toronado beer bar in Lower Haight of SF still has the glass he drank from on display from when he did part of a segment there several years ago. It was midday on a Tuesday, and in one of the cuts he looks around the crowded bar and asks: "Does anyone here have a job"?
I’m not usually one for celebrity death posts, but Anthony did resonate with me as a philosopher of food and life.
Same here. I thought his commentary in his shows was poignant and honest. It was well known he had a troubled past but he never seemed to me like one to off himself.
I have an email half written to him inviting him to SushiFest. Aya had offered to have her brother forward it. Figured I had a 50:50 shot of him accepting.
What ksolem wrote.
I read Kitchen Confidential and Cook's Tour years ago - lots of fun.
A great writer, funny, loved his irreverent ways. He seemed like a genuinely cool guy in an industry full of a lot of pretentiousness. The original bad-boy chef, before all these bozos showed up in their chambray shirts and stupid tattoos.
And he plugged one of my fave restaurants in Montreal on his show!
No offense to the vegetarians and vegans among us, but this is vintage Bourdain.
But we shouldn't expect anything different from the Vegan Menace. After all, the dietary part of it is only a front for the underlying ideology which, to sum it up, is essentially the hating of humanity for being human.
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.
To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.
Wife said he had depression. Most every episode of his wonderful show featured a tsunami of booze - and Tony's taste for drink was well known. Problem is, alcohol worsens depression. Hit a rough patch, dive into the bottle and some people never make it out. I'm told people self medicate with booze like crazy. Perhaps not the "reason" we lost Tony, but it didn't help.
His books showed how to write in the 1st person without making it the me, myself, and I show.
I am at a loss for words. I never missed a show, I loved the way he always delved into the "real" people wherever he went. I just wish he could have disappeared into some small village in SE Asia and finished his life out eating pho every day, prepared by some little old grandma. A punker with soul.
RIP Moss
I just tried to order "Kitchen Confidential" from Amazon. They are out of stock whether you want hardcover, paperback or audio CD. That says something.
I just find it very sad. The world was literally his oyster. He had enough money to do whatever he wanted. He was an articulate and highly intelligent person. I understand money doesn't buy happiness; I would have thought though that with his resources he could have found something to give his life meaning.
I worked as a line cook at high-end joints for 15yrs. Even a Sous Chef gig for a spell (salary was 70hr weeks...ouch). That Kitchen Confidential book was like a parallel of my Rez life. Sh#t pay but the funnest time of my life. Gonna miss AB. Always going to wonder WHY??? ;-(
When I was a younger man, a philosophical existentialist out of Viet Nam with wounds, I cognitively understood suicide completely. Every card-carrying nihilist knows that suicide is always something they have in their back pocket.
Today, these days—old and practiced, I can’t imagine it. I no longer can see any basis for it.
Your idea that homeless and disabled people aren’t suicidal is dillisional.
A sample of 330 homeless adults were interviewed. Sixty-one percent of the study sample reported suicidal ideation and 34% had attempted suicide. Fifty-six percent of the men and 78% of the women reported prior suicidal ideation, while 28 percent of the men and 57% of the women had attempted suicide.
RESULTS:
Of the 1,192 homeless persons located and contacted, 156 persons had died (13.1%). Nine of the deaths were by completed suicide (5.8%). All were male. Mean age for the suicide subgroup was 34 +/- 8.7 years, significantly younger than those who died of other causes (p < .01). The majority had completed high school education. While the majority of deaths were drug or alcohol related, in only 1 of 9 deaths by suicide was there a history of drug abuse. Psychiatric comorbidity was recorded in 4 of the 9 persons. The majority of persons (6/9) had died of suicide by hanging.
CONCLUSION:
Suicide is not a negligible cause of death among the homeless population.
What really amazes me is how the homeless and completely disabled don't commit suicide. You would think that they would be so depressed that they would want to check out, yet they don't.
It's easy to criticize Anthony's choice from a comfy chair and possessing a relatively intact brain. Unless you've really known the blackest depths of real clinical depression you should take great pause before pronouncing anyone a coward or selfish in some way.
Most people who've struggled with addiction in it's many forms are self treating various underlying mental conditions.
He was a lot of things, but to me he was a dishwasher. Most would hide this from a resume, but Bourdain spoke to it frequently. At 16 (a difficult year) I was too, spending late nights in a hot, steam filled 4 star restaurant with the most dysfunctional people I’ve known in 35 years of life. I learned more about alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental health in 12 months than I ever needed to know, especially as a teenager. It was completely miserable time. It also taught me everything I needed to learn about work ethic. Even today, in the back of mind it’s “don’t f*#k this up because I’m never going back to that.” Bourdain, even George Orwell, spoke of similar lessons from dishwashing (good read: “Down and out in Paris and London”). Feels like we lost a brother.
Your bullying and this horrifying post asking a poster to off himself is HEINOUS!
STOP!
No bullying eKat. What drFailed said was sooo insensitive. His expectations that the homeless should be offing themselves b/c life was sooo sh**ty?? They don't have honor? You on-board with that reasoning?
I didn't ask him to go-off to the dark. It was a pointed attack at his reasoning.
My buddy Sir Loin's b-day was the other day and I Still really miss him.
This is about deep depression and trying to understand why? Not culling populations
Bourdain was a role model to me and seemed to have life in the cup of his hand. Why??????
pretty saddened by this. i always put him on a similar page as hunter s thompson, the school of gonzo. i cant stand almost any other food critic, they are either shallow wankers or lacking in depth, where AB just used the food industry as a lens on the world, no different to how HST used drugs and guns.
suicide? it is what it is. im sure he would have chosen ANY other option if hed seen it open to him. it may be like hemmingway, he tried every other avenue he could and exhausted them all. the coke, the travel, the insight, the ideas, the people - all that kept him going beyond the easy option that was to end it decades ago.
and I was impressed that he was eating the one food I hate more than any other
German Food - stewed meat with a big slab of fat with over cooked potatoes on sauerkraut with that barfy vinegar smell
Yuk
Several people, family and friends have called me to talk about Tony's death. I am not sad or surprised. It is a tough business. Overworked, under-payed, and under-appreciated, but sharing that with some of the most amazing souls I have ever encountered.
I have not read his famous book nor will I. It hits too close to home. My older brother hung himself so there is that anguish too. And then there are the Mexicans, whose plight I am all to familiar with. This is no tragedy but a life well lived by an honest man unafraid to suffer the realities of soulful living.
Please don't take food or the gathering for meals shared for granted.
That was very well written. He hit the nail on the head about addiction and depression - from my personal experience anyway.
The "alone" someone feels while they are the center of attention in a huge crowd. That alone. That cold-alone that is more alone and cold than you'd be if you were strapped to Voyager One like a dark frosty vacuum-dried interplanetary hood ornament of freezer-burned meat. That alone that isn't even black – because at least you can lose yourself in blackness. Blackness and darkness at least has quiet and tranquility.
Thanks for posting that. He sheds some light on stuff that is out of my frame of reference. Things I don't understand and so never would have thought about without reading that.
Thanks for posting that. He sheds some light on stuff that is out of my frame of reference. Things I don't understand and so never would have thought about without reading that.
Unless one has dealt with the burden of addiction it is hard to relate to the demons being dealt with.
I had never heard of Bourdain before he died and I know nothing about drugs nor fame... but the essay, while well written, doesn't ring true to me. Have other, perhaps closer friends expressed a similar understanding of his struggle? F*#k I know as they say.
What I posted as a recovering alcoholic is not armchair. Any addiction, substance abuse, depression or any other mental illness is something no one else can grasp.
"Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.” But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.
We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.
So, why don’t we love Mexico?
We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.
In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.
Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime. It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.
It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.
In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.
The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist—to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of “Parts Unknown,” we meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change—at great, even horrifying personal cost."
Just read KC again. Guy had a be-bop style that only drifted off course when he goosed the gonzo element too hard. Such a blast to read. Looked forward to every session like a fine meal.
"Here is @jordanbpeterson answering my question Friday night. If anyone feels this way too, PLEASE listen to him. I have replayed this over and over again."
"In the words of Nietzsche, 'He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.' People are constantly striving to reach their potential, and when they think they can do better, it often creates a feeling of uneasiness. Contentment is found when one feels they are making the best decision in their current situation. In previous times, global communication systems such as the Internet, television, and phones did not exist. Because of this, people were refined to their immediate environment, making one’s meaning relatively clear. An example of this is a child that was born into a family on a farm. The child was most likely going to work on the farm throughout his life because his family needed him in order to keep the farm running efficiently. If on the odd chance he did have the ability to leave the farm, his other options were limited to a select few. Now, with virtually all information globalized, people see and have access to unlimited opportunities and paths in life, giving the impression that fame and fortune are only right around the corner. Although this wide variety of choices is beneficial to some, it can leave the common person overwhelmed, always questioning their current path. This questioning occurs because they are constantly comparing themselves to a select few ultra successful individuals. Although these outliers seem to be in no way different from you, they are usually products of a combination of the right timing, genetics, and environment. In my opinion, the constant display of these extremely successful people’s lives across a global scale can easily lead one to believe that they are not living up to what they could or should be. This envy causes frustration and disappointment, which most definitely play a role in the growing depression and suicide rates across the world. The bottom line is that people need both concrete meaning and direction in their lives, and this becomes nearly impossible with the overload of information and opportunities we now have access to. But we can create our own sense of meaning through the realization that each person’s life is unique. If people can learn to step back, not be so comparative, and focus on what we as individuals can control, we can live happy and meaningful lives."
Nietzsche's "Amor fati" can be compared to Brene Browns words: "Children are not born into this world to be perfect, they are hard-wired for struggle". Happy people are not happy because they are perfect, but because they embrace their imperfections...
I will not get into what Nietzsche says about the last humans and their state of "we-are-happy"-ness...
I'm not seeing anything other than his re-tweets on his twitter feed from 2 May. What am I missing?
He actually said:
Anthony Bourdain
Verified account
@Bourdain
Follow Follow @Bourdain
More
Replying to @jeffhulme @talleststone
..and I am in no way an HRC fan. I’ve been on the receiving end of her operatives’ wrath. And it ain’t fun,
Why would Hillarys "operatives" harass Bourdain? What does that even mean>
"He actually said:
Anthony Bourdain
Verified account
@Bourdain
Follow Follow @Bourdain
More
Replying to @jeffhulme @talleststone
..and I am in no way an HRC fan. I’ve been on the receiving end of her operatives’ wrath. And it ain’t fun,
He apparently called out HRC on Harvey. "Provoking an irate response from one of her aides."
The conspiracy folks of course made hay.
Slowly working my way through Kitchen Confidential...great read. Really reminds me of his voice on his shows. Weird, but, reading it is almost like a book on tape.
xCon: wonder what [increased suicide rates] correlates with???
Modernity, secularism, diminished social bonds, increased safety concerns, social fragmentation—as well as hopelessness, a lack of centered identity, meaninglessness, alienation, estrangement, isolation, and detachment psychologically.
Modernity, secularism, diminished social bonds, increased safety concerns, social fragmentation—as well as hopelessness, a lack of centered identity, meaninglessness, alienation, estrangement, isolation, and detachment psychologically.
This ^^^
I've long had the feeling that at root of much of clinical depression is the essential feeling of meaninglessness - it's an existential despair at not knowing what to do to fill the hole inside. The isolation that you mention is not just a human's physical isolation. I think it is the humans feeling that they are alone - that the Universe is a void (rather than an infinite love that is holding them).
Anthony Bourdain always struck me as an essentially unhappy person. I was sorry to hear he killed himself, but not surprised.
His episode on the Congo was brutal, a combination of Heart of Darkness, (Conrad) and Apocalypse Now, with Anthony B. in a dark place throughout. Available on Netflix, Sad a real lose of someone who helped us look deeper at are own selfs. R.I.P. Sir.
Certain spiritual traditions would say that every “thing” holds what is commonly seen as “good” and “bad.” Every coin has a heads and a tail. Seeing the head and the tail allows one to see the coin, which is true and invisible.
There has been a “price” to pay for progression, for advancement, for more modern democratic societies, for the apparent autonomy of current, modern individualism. For all that technology and science and education seem to offer to today’s moderns, . . . the other side of the coin is being missed. Hegel said that once an antithesis has finally been recognized as the other side of a thesis, then a new thesis could be conceived that would finally integrate the old thesis and antithesis.
The “price” that I indicated above is, imo, a simple-minded view (ignorance) of seeing only a thesis.
Although we contemporary moderns now seem “all done” with religion, ritual, and myth, we find we are moorless. There’s nothing to anchor and integrate us. We float in space, not really anywhere, without a reference—not unlike this very rock we call the earth.
I’m interested to see what the next evolution (new thesis) will look like for the next “here and now” for humans. I look to the youngest generation to see what’s getting expressed by them. (Not that they understand any of what we see from our old-aged vantage point.)
Can’t cite data but am convinced that suicide is a first world problem.
People who don’t have three hots and a cot don’t have time to question their self-worth.
^^^Maybe no wonder why troubled folks benefit from "wilderness therapy".
Hoods in the woods, and all that.
Utah, which might count as one of the more religious states, has a suicide rate 60% higher than the national average. Leading cause of death for ages 10 to 17. Crazy. On the state's radar...but...not sure they're really addressing it.
Yes, thank you. That would be very nice. (I haven’t been on a rope for perhaps a decade now, but your invitation is compelling.)
RobertL,
Cheers.
One might note that on the one hand you call out the lack of resources of the homeless and its impacts on their suffering compassionately, yet you also seem to suggest that resources is a basis for the lack of compassion in those who have more of them. In both instances, resources would appear to be the basis of suffering of those who don’t have much, and ignorance for those who have more. Is resources the central issue here? I suspect one might argue that there is a certain level of resources that are necessary for happiness (but not much more).
Can’t cite data but am convinced that suicide is a first world problem.
People who don’t have three hots and a cot don’t have time to question their self-worth.
He stuck me as the loneliest man in the world. Friendly, but no real friends; forever a visitor, the rolling stone with no real home.
DMT
DMT, I think you hit the proverbial nail on the head. I've started reading Bourdain's "Medium Raw". Already read "Kitchen Confidential".
In "Medium Raw" he is much more explicit in his descriptions of self loathing and inability to find a "place" in this world we call earth and humanity. F*#king sad he could not find somewhere he felt at home. He mentions in "Medium Raw" he felt most at home in the Caribbean leading an intoxicated, simple life. It seems that is where he found peace.
Seems the need to "prove" himself and live up to the expectations of others was something he struggled with and found only one way out of the struggle.
I don't like sad songs or the blues, either. I'm not a dweller on the past. I prefer to look forward to the light.
Sorry... don't mind me. Just thinking outloud. Like I said, the fact of Bourdain's suicide hit me kind of hard.
DMT
Not into sad songs, blues, CW singing about lost love and all that crap. Like you, prefer to see the "glass full" side of life.
His suicide hit me hard as well, which seems a bit strange as people I know have died and not left me feeling the loss. Maybe from a climber's point of view I see him as somewhat of a kindred soul that couldn't find his way out of the paper bag.
Reading his books, sometimes my head hears his voice telling the story, as if I were listening to him reading the book.
So far what I've read of "Medium Raw" gives some insight as to the torment he went through in his head.
You saw a hollowness in his eyes I did not pick up on watching his shows. I get it now.
Anthony Bourdain
Let us know!