Two years ago Anthony Bourdain, the star talent of CNN’s Parts Unknown, was found dead, having hanged himself from the doorknob of his luxury hotel room. I remember the news coming across my laptop and in news alerts on my telephone, while I was sitting in a library working on a manuscript. A presumptuous feeling welled up inside me, a kind of anger that was totally unjustified. I drove out to a Dunkin’ Donuts, and CNN was discussing it live. And the words just came out of me, “F*** you, Tony.”
I’m just a fan — a guy who read his books, put some of his recipes into our home’s regular rotation, spent a 30th birthday at the Park Avenue restaurant he made famous, and binge-watched his television show when my children were squirming infants. I suppose I felt as so many others did, that his suicide was a special blasphemy. How dare someone I envy that much kill himself! But, of course, we can envy people even as they are struggling with their own demons. In my ignorance, I may have wanted to trade lives with the Anthony Bourdain of television, but he, in full knowledge of what it’s like to inhabit his thin, angular skull, might have traded for my thick head sight unseen.
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