“But… he was the kind of man I wanted to be,” I said yesterday morning, my first bewildered thought after hearing the news that Anthony Bourdain had killed himself.
What I meant was: he was the kind of man I most admire, a mirror I hold up to myself and others, the kind of human I want to be. Restless, sweary, not always very nice, but ultimately soulful, curious, hungry, and real. I turned to him when I didn’t know what to watch. I trusted his taste when I didn’t know what to think. He had the best job in the world — and probably the loneliest. He was, I write with special irony, my answer to the question: “If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be?”
