My own crackpot theory is that many of these artists and celebrities throw themselves into mastery of their domain, and perhaps on some level do so believing that the superficial rewards of money, fame, power, and being recognized as really good at something will ultimately bring them the happiness and completeness they desire, only to find out, it just doesn’t.
I think most people reading this, accomplished in their personal lives or not, relates to feelings of occasional self-doubt and bouts of wondering if this is as good as it gets. But a lot of us ordinary folk have social support structures that we can call upon to bail ourselves out. I get the sense that the more successful the Anthony Bourdains of the world are, the more public their life becomes, the harder it is to trust people and to find support.
I also think that because they’ve achieved stardom and being on top, their emotional highs are higher, and their emotional lows are lower. Bourdain outwardly projected bravado and his own unique kind of urbane masculinity. But inside, what he projected was probably the opposite of what he truly felt internally. He had 2 failed marriages. He had a daughter but didn’t get a chance to see her much with his traveling and production. He was at mid-life. Maybe he just got drunk or stoned and said ‘Fuck it’
It’s really sad. I feel for his friends and family, and what the agony they’re going through. Suicide is just brutal for the survivors.
One CNN article is describing This 1999 New Yorker article, authored by Bourdain, as the thing that started his rise to broad public stardom. It’s well-written, and I automatically heard Bourdain’s voice reciting it to me as I read it.
That is the article that eventually became Kitchen Confidential. It’s the first audiobook I ever bought, read by Bourdain himself, and even though I’ve listened to it enough times I could probably recite large sections of it, I still listen to it again every now and then.
In the immortal words of Ted Striker, what a pisser.
This is surprising. He looked like the sort that enjoyed his travels and developed great rapport with those hosting him for meals, whether they be Ethiopian, French, Brazilian, whatever. People seemed to like him and he seemed to like everyone. Not traits I’d associate as being liable to commit suicide.
He always had an air of angry discontentment from what I saw, so to me this wasn’t too surprising. Someone above called him a tortured artist, which I think is accurate.
That’s a lot, but that’s not at all that unusual for heavy smokers, IME. I’ve known people with three-pack-a-day habits, and I did one-and-a-half-to-two a day at my peak about 20 years ago.
Though I like to cook, I never watched Parts Unknown when it started. Mrs. L.A. introduced me to it later, and it was a pleasure to watch. She said it was more fun when he was smoking and getting drunk, but she was glad he was getting healthy. His recent shows seemed a little on the philosophical and ‘preachy’ side. Nice to see the places he’d visit, but it seemed there was less emphasis on the food.
The news of his suicide shocked us both when it aired on the morning news. They didn’t say in the report that it was suicide, but I saw the Suicide Hotline on Gordon Ramsay’s tweet and they talked about suicide after the segment. When (If!) I die, they’ll have to drag me kicking and slashing and screaming. When someone croaks himself or herself, it is something that I can’t quite wrap my head around.
This. I was never a huge fan of his show, but I liked it enough to stop and watch it when I was channel surfing. I always got the impression that he was quite unhappy—he often seemed like he was mildly angry and frustrated at the world. When I saw the news this morning that he’d committed suicide my first thought was “why does that not surprise me?”
It’ll be a lot harder watching his shows now. R.I.P Mr. Bourdain.
Unfortunately, the answer in some cases is “nothing,” any more than a person who is killed by a brain aneurysm or sudden blood clot can be said to have a life that is “empty of” anything. Sometimes the disease is a function of trauma and feelings of loneliness or emptyness, but sometimes it’s none of those things: it’s just a chemical malfunction that one day leaps up and happens to be fatal. It’s horrifying, but for some people, it is so.
This is very upsetting. He just seemed so stuffed with life…one of those people you would’ve loved to have had the chance to spend a few hours with in some exotic location just drinking and shooting the shit. RIP.
This one stunned me. I usually take celebrity deaths in stride, but this morning when it came on the CBS morning news summary I let out a yelp. It’s not just that I didn’t expect it. It’s that I feel some sort of closeness to this person I’ve never met.
Anthony Bourdain was much more than a food commentator. He spoke and wrote about culture. You could learn more about a place by watching him eat a bowl of noodles than you could by watching a travel documentary.
His interests were broad and far-reaching, and he wasn’t afraid to offend. He wrote a book about Typhoid Mary. In a criticism of her untenable ideas about food production and distribution, he once famously called Alice Waters “Pol Pot in a muumuu.”
He also had a wicked sense of humor. Once on one of his shows set in Southeast Asia he was served a dish containing uncooked blood. He called it “CSI soup.”
This is a terrible loss for those close to him, and also for the greater world. He spoke with a unique voice.
