Anthony Bourdain's Nasty Bits

By JULIETTE ROSSANT What is Anthony Bourdain up to? The man spends significant time introducing his latest book, The Nasty Bits explaining to us how he cannot write! See for yourself: Words fail me. Again and again. Or maybe it's me that fails the English language... but typically I fall short. Alack and alas! Is the muse of Bourdain's inspiration drying up? Has she packed her bags and stayed over at some god-forsaken hotel while Bourdain unwittingly wends along, world hopping and globe trotting? No. Of course, not. Bourdain is an author, a racconteur, a teller of tall tales -- a liar. As Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in an essay: I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist, too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. (The Language of the Night, p. 148) OK, Le Guin is a fine writer and easily a cut above Bourdain, but the point is that perhaps we should not believe much of anything Bourdain says, even at his most earnest moments. And that includes any self-deprecation about his own writing talents. Clearly, this guy can write. In fact, Anthony Bourdain is quite the essayist and literary man, at least in these latter days of television-induced, digital device-crippling literacy, masked as it were in sex, drugs, rock'n'roll. The Nasty Bits is really a disguise for The Collected Essays and Articles of Anthony Bourdain (2000-2005), probably named by the author himself. The real value added by the book to these already published articles is the Commentary at the back of the book. Here we get to read Bourdain on Bourdain -- and what fun this can be, listening to the bad boy rank on himself. History needs historiography, and writing certainly needs commentary from authors, who can explain what was going on externally and internally -- with a bit of revisionism thrown in for good measure (what Alan Wald calls "political amnesia"). He leads off each comment more often than not with some over-the-top remark: "Damn, was I angry! This is one mean-spirited rant!" or "More and more frequently, I find out that everything I know is wrong, or at least very much in question." Were he a bit more adolescent (in years, at least), he might almost sound like Sting -- an Englishman in New York, cross-dressed (one might say) with the pen of Stephen Fry (who, come to think of it, wrote a whole book called The Liar). But no, he is our own Anthony Bourdain, and you are best advised to grab ahold of this book to add to your Bourdain bookshelf: it's worth it for the comments alone. Book details: Publisher Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Book reviews: Playboy The Guardian New York Times Related sites: AnthonyBourdain.com Brasserie Les Halles Travel Channel Food Network NPR ABC Newscastle Previous articles: Kitchen Confidential: Spiceless Will Write for Food: Dianne Jacob Robert Klein: The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue The White House: Think Like a Chef Valentine's Knives: Cut to the Heart Rocco DiSpirito: Ridiculed in the Rainbow Room Real TV Cooking? Kitchen Confidential a la Sex and the City [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, cookbooks --> back to superchefblog