RIP Anthony Bourdain

One of the curious things about reading him today is that you can hear his speaking voice, exactly, when you read him. It's impossible to read him in your own voice, if that makes sense.

David Sedaris, once you've heard him speak, is another one like that. But Bourdain wrote the way he talked. The same language, the same rhythm. It's like reading good music.

 

Reviving an old thread here, but I thought this an interesting possible addition to it that people might want to read, from Rolling Stone:

The Lost Diary of Anthony Bourdain

It discusses Bourdain's once-anonymous posts on a Reddit forum on Brazilian jiujitsu, a sport in which he trained and competed in the last few years of his life.

His death was such a loss, made worse, in my opinion, by the fact of it being by suicide. He was such a great, colorful writer/speaker, and it shows up again in the posts cited in that link.

And typefitter was exactly right in the post just above, about Bourdain's "voice."

 

Please don’t.

 

Strange how Bourdain's death keeps lingering in the ether.

More than Cobain. More than Prince. More than any actor or public figure I can remember in recent memory.

But Anthony Bourdain? He seems to pop up on the socials or TV every other day.

I never watched him once so I'm curious about this eternal persona of his.

 

Does CNN not have the rights to the show anymore or have they just made the decision to not run them? I genuinely miss the show. I can watch the same episode multiple times and have.

 

I think it's the "voice". It really does/did connect.

 

Don't, what? I'll say what I think, just like anybody else. Geez...

 

Bourdain's voice was so authentic. Perhaps it was part of the I-don't-give-a-shit persona (he really did give a shit, obv) he crafted. He clearly wrote a lot of his VO. He read the stuff with such conviction that no one else could've written it for him.

 

Why does suicide make it worse?

 

Prince and Cobain sang. Bourdain spoke. There is a huge difference in your connection to the person when they speak to you.

Songbird, you have never even watched short youtube clips of him?

Here are a few to get you started...

 

Cobain and Prince were elite artists, who knew they were both elite and artists. They were separate from their public, they didn’t inhabit the same space as the unelite people.
AB spent his elite life as an’elite persoanlity’ intentionally cavorting with regular people, speaking to them, listening to them. He’s the guy who’s mottos was got a bar t 3pm alone, have a beer and talk to anyone,even if you don’t agree with them. In my life Antony Bourdain was a man among men. Prince and Cobain were mere artists with nearly unparalleled, but narrow, gifts.