RIP Anthony Bourdain

[rthomas]

Stunned by the news of his death. He had the one job I wished I had rather than mine.

[bundabergdevil]

If you never had a chance to read his original article in the New Yorker that launched his career, today would be a good day to do so:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1...e-reading-this

[mattman91]

Sad news, I really liked him.

[fisheyes]

It is beyond sad that yet another person has taken his own life.

For those of us fortunate enough not to be battling depression it's hard to conceive of a despair so deep that you would leave this world. A world in which you have young children nonetheless.
David Foster Wallace's works comes the closest to letting us into that level of depression.

I never really understood it to any degree until I read these two pieces by DFW:

"The Depressed Person":

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploa...01-0059425.pdf


"THE PLANET TRILLAPHON AS IT STANDS IN RELATION TO THE BAD THING":


https://quomodocumque.files.wordpres...the_planet.pdf

[BigWayne]

If you never had a chance to read his original article in the New Yorker that launched his career, today would be a good day to do so:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1...e-reading-this

I read that earlier today after seeing the link in an article about his death. Very interesting read, especially since my son just finished culinary school earlier this year and is working in a high end kitchen now.

[mattman91]

"Maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go." — Anthony Bourdain

[Tripping William]

Ugh. Gut-punch. So sad.

[sagegrouse]

Duke grad William Styron, author of Lie Down in Darkness, Sophie's Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner, penned a short book, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990), about his struggles with depression. A key passage:

Depression afflicts millions directly, and many millions more who are relatives or friends of victims. As assertively democratic as a Norman Rockwell poster, it strikes indiscriminately at all ages, races, creeds, and classes, though women are at considerably higher risk than men. The occupational list (dressmakers, barge captains, sushi chefs, Cabinet members) of its patients is too long and tedious; it is enough to say that very few people escape being a potential victim of the disease, at least in its milder form. Despite depression’s eclectic reach, it has demonstrated with fair convincingness that artistic types (especially poets) are particularly vulnerable to the disorder—which in its graver, clinical manifestation takes upward of 20 percent of its victims by way of suicide. Just a few of these fallen artists, all modern, make up a sad but scintillant roll call: Hart Crane, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Arshile Gorky, Cesare Pavese, Romain Gary, Sylvia Plath, Mark Rothko, John Berryman, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Diane Arbus, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Anne Sexton, Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky—the list goes on. (The Russian poet Mayakovsky was harshly critical of his great contemporary Esenin’s suicide a few years before, which should stand as a caveat for all who are judgmental about self-destruction.) When one thinks of these doomed and splendidly creative men and women, one is drawn to contemplate their childhoods, where, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the seeds of the illness take strong root; could any ofthe m have had a hint, then, of the psyche’s perishability, its exquisite fragility? And why were they destroyed, while others—similarly stricken—struggled through?

When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed melancholia, a word which appeared in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated—the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer—had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantical damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease; nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.

As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been pre-empted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder had evolved into a storm—a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else—even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” Or “You’ll pull out of it.” Or “We all have bad days.” The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.

[OldPhiKap]

Damn.

[fidel]

Bourdain turned a food show into stories of the joy of life.

His Parts Unknown on Detroit was one of my favorites...looking into a city that has struggled, to find those people with the inspiration to make great food with what they have.

He will be missed.

[diablesseblu]

Am simply gutted by this. For as cool as he appeared on screen, he was even better in real life. A totally real, no BS fella. Nothing escaped him "in the moment."

I cannot fathom this having happened.

[weezie]

Mixed emotions since who really knows what's going on with celebrities. Sad for his little girl. Much misery in such a young life.

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

There seems to be a general disbelief that depression can hit "successful" people. That's a ludicrous concept. Clinical depression is a disease. It may be exacerbated by external factors, but at its core it is an imbalance in brain chemistry.

Being shocked that a charismatic guy with a TV show lost a battle with depression is akin to not understanding how a movie star died of cancer. Fame, wealth, and success do not preclude depression or other medical conditions.

Bourdain was quite transparent with his various struggles. While his death is certainly sad and tragic, it is not surprising.

[Reilly]

I read somewhere that, based on some drinking on the show, you were getting flamed online from beer snobs. Does that happen often?

Bourdain: A lot. I would say that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I'm drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there. You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some []ing Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don't like to talk about beer, honestly. I don't like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer. If you bring me a really good one, a good craft beer, I will enjoy it, and say so. But I'm not gonna analyze it.

I was in San Francisco. And I was desperate for a beer, and I walked into this place. I thought it was an old bar. And I sat down, and I looked up, and I noticed there was a wide selection of beers I'd never heard of. Which is fine. Ok, I'm in sort of brewpub. What's good? But I looked around: the entire place was filled with people sitting there with five small glasses in front of them, filled with different beers, taking notes. This is not a bar. This is []ing Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This is wrong, This is not what a bar is about. A bar is to go to get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time, and interact with other people, or make bad decisions, or feel bad about your life. It's not to sit there []ing analyzing beer. It's antithetical.

As seen on Twitter, @Loddonbrewery

[YmoBeThere]

I read somewhere that, based on some drinking on the show, you were getting flamed online from beer snobs. Does that happen often?

Bourdain: A lot. I would say that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I'm drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there. You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some []ing Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don't like to talk about beer, honestly. I don't like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer. If you bring me a really good one, a good craft beer, I will enjoy it, and say so. But I'm not gonna analyze it.

I was in San Francisco. And I was desperate for a beer, and I walked into this place. I thought it was an old bar. And I sat down, and I looked up, and I noticed there was a wide selection of beers I'd never heard of. Which is fine. Ok, I'm in sort of brewpub. What's good? But I looked around: the entire place was filled with people sitting there with five small glasses in front of them, filled with different beers, taking notes. This is not a bar. This is []ing Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This is wrong, This is not what a bar is about. A bar is to go to get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time, and interact with other people, or make bad decisions, or feel bad about your life. It's not to sit there []ing analyzing beer. It's antithetical.

As seen on Twitter, @Loddonbrewery

He would not have been a fan of the Ymm, Beer thread.


Ohhh, I see what you did there.

[weezie]

I feel bad for Eric Ripert, the best friend who was traveling with Bourdain. Dealing with shock, grief and the untold exhaustion of transporting a body from one country to another. All the details and agony of such a deep loss.

Really, what the hell.

[jimmymax]

Favorite post-Bourdain piece so far:

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...urdain/562484/