I’ve always had a bit of a contrarian streak when it comes to things everyone tells me I should love. Once discourse over a movie, show, book, or even a person becomes too fawning, I get my hackles up and develop a distinctive and entirely unjustified dislike of the subject. So it was with Anthony Bourdain, whose boudless adoration made me reluctant to watch his shows or read his books. Who was this guy that everyone was going on about? With the release of a documentary about him and the controversy resulting from the director’s use of deepfake audio to replicate Bourdain’s voice, I started hearing his name again, and I overcame my prejudice long enough to check out his breakthrough book, Kitchen Confidential.
I’ll say this about Bourdain: the man could write. There are two common methods that weak writers use to write books. The less self-conscious among them simply write as if speaking—or, in all likelyhood, speak and have their words transcribed. The result is bland prose, but easy to read and engaging enough if the story itself is interesting. The second technique, common to non-writers with literary pretensions, is to adopt a stilted, overly complex language, cramming adjectives and metaphors into simple ideas to bloat them into some facsimile of depth.
Bourdain adopted neither of these strategies. His prose is eloquent and conversational, allowing flourishes where appropriate without lettting them overpower the text. His language is peppered with expletives, but in a manner that feels natural—there was never a “fuck” or “asshole” that didn’t feel like it emerged spontaneously, they way it would in conversation after a few drinks.
The structure of the book is loose, begining with an episodic biography of his childhood (not nearly as hardscabble as his hagiographers imply, by the way: he went to private school and enjoyed a summer in France as a child, not something poor American kids get to do much) and continuing in bursts through his early and middle career. He is honest about his faults, and reveals enough warts that I expect most of what he says is treu in spirit, even if the details are sometimes exaggerated. Some of the characters he describes feel a bit larger than life, and I’m guessing he allowed himself a bit of poetic license when describing the debauchery of their lives, extent of their unmatched skills, and floridity of their language. Here, for instance, is a snippet of speech supposedly representative of what a cook from an Italian resaurant would regularly say:
'You, sir, are a loathsome swine. Too damn ignorant to pour piss from a boot! Your odor offends me and my shell-like ear gapeth to hear thy screams of pain. I insist you avert your face and serve me a libation before I smite your sorry ass with the tip of my boot-you sniveling little cocksucker!'
Has a human being ever said anything like that sincerely? Probably not, though I don’t doubt that’s how Bourdain rememebrs it, more or less.
After the biographic portions, the book fragments into different topics: tips for aspiring chefs, inside secrets about how food is prepared and what the discerning diner should avoid, character sketches of people he’s worked with (always celebratory, if not unaware of the individual’s flaws), a detailed desciption of a day in the life of an up-scale chef. I found all of it interesting, and read through the whole thing quickly.
All in all, I can’t say I’m in the hardcore Bourdain fan club, but I’ve lost my prejudice toward the guy at least. He seems like a talented chef and writer, and no doubt brought joy to a greater number of people than those to whom he brought pain, as addicts always do (he is upfront about his checked past and addiction, though doesn’t wallow in the details too heavily). A good book worth reading.
