David Attenborough [whispering]:
“Like a grain of sand in a vast desert, the predator blends seamlessly into its environment, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.”
The Anthony Bourdain Reader (Amazon) is a collection of writings from the late author, TV host, and chef, including some unpublished pieces.
The Anthony Bourdain Reader is also a showcase for new and never-before-seen material, like diary entries from Bourdain’s first trip to France as a teenager and “It’s Cruel and Unforgiving Terrain,” a piece on the New York restaurant scene, as well as unpublished short fiction like “I Quit My Job Yesterday” and chapters from No New Messages, his unfinished novel. These newly discovered pieces all contribute to give the fullest picture of the man behind the books.
Here’s a sample from his teenage diary he kept on a trip to France:
And from a review in the Guardian:
Some of the loveliest passages come when Bourdain writes with just-so tenderness and precision about his family: a journey with his brother to La Teste-de-Buch in France among whose sand dunes they holidayed as young men; the outsize pleasure he takes in his five-year-old daughter nibbling on Pecorino and an anchovy. I suspect Bourdain will be read in years to come less as a writer about food than of food work. Everywhere he lands — whether in struggling bistros, mob joints or midtown nightclubs — he warms to the subaltern caste of underpaid toilers slicing and sizzling and sweating away.
The book was edited by his longtime agent Kimberly Witherspoon and contains a foreword by Patrick Radden Keefe. Buy now at Bookshop.org or Amazon.