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Feeding the Mind with
Anthony Bourdain
by
Mim Harrison
 Tony Bourdain, the
author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential, A Cook’s Tour
and, most recently, Les Halles Cookbook, harbors a huge appetite for reading.
“I read
histories, memoirs, crime novels, essays, anything that catches my
interest,” he says. (A. J. Liebling and a book on the Canadian Hell’s
Angels are in his current stack.) “I read on planes, on trains and on vacation.
I ship ahead a whole crate of books and luxuriate.”
A master French chef with an overriding passion
for authenticity
(garlic presses are verboten), he bemoans the absence of
what he calls
“a legitimate food culture in America.” What about books—are
we also lacking a legitimate reading culture? “Both may be problematic
symptoms of a larger malaise,”
he says.
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“On vacation I
ship ahead a whole
crate of books
and luxuriate.”
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But don’t ask
him to be the poster child for either of these shortcomings. Bourdain has
been devouring books since the day he learned to read. “I was a precocious
reader, beginning very early,” he recalls. “By kindergarten I was way ahead of my level.” The Friends of Eddie
Coyle and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
both made an impact.
As a chef, he may spend an early morning at the
greenmarket hunting for the freshest mushrooms.
As a reader, he also
engages in pursuit. “I hunt books by author or subject,” he says. But
whereas he would pass right by
a mushroom that was old and woody, it is not the same with books. “I
generally read through, even if disappointed,” he confesses. (To which
Lewis Carroll, in his charming essay Feeding the Mind, might
admonish: “You’ll get laid up with mental indigestion.”)
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“I avoid reading better writers when I’m
writing. No Nabokov.”
| When he’s writing, Bourdain still reads but with a difference.
With his customary irreverence he says, “I avoid reading better writers when I’m
writing. No Nabokov.” Asked how and when he wants people to read his books,
he replies: “Boardrooms, beaches or brothels. I don’t care. When I imagine
my readers, I imagine working cooks.”
Which many probably are.
But not all. Bourdain’s writing is delicious fare on its own. Just taste this
little morsel from Les Halles Cookbook, when he’s writing about the true dangers
of using a dull knife:
You sin against the Kitchen Gods. In a perfect world,
cooks who abuse fine cutlery would be locked in a pillory
and pelted with
McNuggets.
Encountering a writer like Bourdain can easily
lead one to wonder if there is some magical connection between good food
and a good read. Both satisfy a hunger and can go far in nourishing the
soul.
Anthony Bourdain was a speaker at the
Books & Books at Levenger Author Series on November 21, 2004.
Mim Harrison is the senior
writer for Levenger and the editor of Levenger Press.
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