![]() Yet sometimes he comes across as a bit too intent on cutting Bourdain down to a more manageable life size. Whether you are a Bourdain fan or a relative newcomer to his story, you’ll come away with a better understanding of what made the man. This is a gritty contrast to other recent Bourdain books and documentaries that lean heavily on the proud production-company and celebrity collaborators of his later years. He also makes the interesting choice to focus on Bourdain’s early years, before we knew him. A former editor at Sports Illustrated, Leerhsen has the magazine writer’s ability to put us inside the life of a famous person. By ending on the texts, Leerhsen gives in to salaciousness, undermining what is otherwise a stylized and exhaustively researched celebrity biography. Throughout the book, different aspects of Bourdain’s life and personality are cast as foreshadowing his end. Leerhsen chooses to view Bourdain chiefly through the lens of his suicide. This book doesn’t merely light candles but scuffs him up. The older me, the one who prefers wine to fizz, wishes Leerhsen had more to say about things like: a) the elite and vernacular food worlds pre- and post-Bourdain b) how Bourdain walked a moral tightrope across the conventions of travel writing and reporting, no mean feat for a wealthy white man in skinny jeans and c) the sense that he was at the vanguard, more so than even the most scrutinized actors, of a new type of American masculinity. His Bourdain book goes down like a mass-market rock bio. Down and Out in Paradise is not the most subtle thing you’ll ever read. Either way, I suspect he would have admired the author’s guts. It’s hard to say if Bourdain would have liked this book. His admiration for Bourdain is nearly always apparent. He’s not here, though, to discredit or dismiss his subject. Leerhsen’s book.has a lot of people trying to join Bourdain on the couch, ideally without his trousers, and thus has more adrenaline and feels truer to life. ![]() So is his frequent coldness to many who loved and worked with him. Here are exact, disturbing details about his suicide. Grittier than anything we've read about before.
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