Bourdain could not accept that intoxication is a danger to be managed rather than a glory to be pushed deeper into.
On Anthony Bourdain’s show about travel and food, Parts Unknown, I liked that he was an old-fashioned kind of liberal, one who would make room even for uncomfortable conversations. In one memorable episode, he took a Brazilian jujitsu instructor he liked out for a meal in San Francisco and let the guy praise gentrification without apology, even casting aspersions on the scum and riffraff that used to hang around the city. In another episode, he allowed a Piedmontese with a blended Italian-German-Swiss identity basically explain that mass immigration to Europe was unsustainable — not something Bourdain wanted to hear. Occasionally, when he felt he needed to tilt against audience prejudices, he was preachy. I didn’t need his Iran episode to convince me that Iranians are human beings — I knew that already. And the post-Brexit U.K. episode was just mirthless whingeing.
At the time of his death, he seemed to have been doing well. His show was a success and he was involved in a huge food-market project at the Chelsea Piers in New York City. But then the news came that he’d hung himself. I was angry because I knew a bunch of people who had struggled with addiction and looked up to him as a guy who had gone through it and figured it out. Suicide is contagious. Worse, and it is hard for people to grasp this, it is usually done not only out of depression but partially out of spite, a desire to inflict evil on others.
In the years since his death, the only smart thing I’ve read about Bourdain and his legacy comes from someone else who admired him and then finally let the evidence speak for itself.
Cailey Rizzo, writing on her confessional Substack, talks about her own brushes with the man himself. But something in her wised up after his death. She notes a late episode of Parts Unknown where Bourdain meets up in Miami with Iggy Pop, the infamous rock star.
You get the sense that Bourdain has come to this interview as a pilgrim comes to their guru on top of a mountain. The duo sits near a window with Venetian blinds. The sun is shining.
“As far as looking after my health,” Bourdain starts, grinning, “your music early on was a negative example.”
Iggy, clean and sober for a long time, was really a health-nut by that point. The interview goes on:
As Iggy keeps talking about simple pleasures, Bourdain’s adam’s apple jumps. His eyes dart around as he asks his hero, “You’re the template for the rockstar. Other rock stars look to you to figure out ‘How should I behave?’ . . . Given that, what thrills you?”
Iggy smiles. “The nicest stuff right now, it’s really embarrassing,” he says, completely serene yet almost sheepish. “It’s being loved and actually appreciating the people that are giving that to me.”
And is it just me—or does Bourdain’s face fall?
It’s not just her. Something about Bourdain could not accept that intoxication is a danger to be managed rather than a glory to be pushed deeper into. His last intoxication was his girlfriend, a tempestuous actress. His suicide was almost certainly his spiteful testimony to the depth of her grip on him. Not her fault but his.