Anthony Bourdain has inspired me to get back into writing. Not easy for a dead man. Luckily, he wasn’t just the TV personality I knew him as during life- he was a writer long before that. In fact, he was a good writer. How good? The best I’ve ever read. Honest.
I won’t claim to be the most prolific reader- I’m not. I probably read twenty to thirty books per year. I won’t claim to be the most discerning and erudite reader either- nothing sounds more alarming to me than being required to read classic literature at this stage in life (though I might have devoured it as a younger, more inquisitive mind). The reason Bourdain has leapt over the heads of all the other writers that I love- Thoreau, Twain, Michael Lewis, Tolkein and more; is simple. Bourdain’s voice is crystal clear and his storytelling abilities are off-the-charts good. He’s raw and authentic.
The way he delves into the human heart by way of the intestines leaves me in awe. His charming style that combines words like fuck and dick with ones that I have to circle to someday lookup their meaning. His ability to make the reader hungry to the point of putting the book down to eat is unparalleled.
For what it’s worth, his mental health challenges and eventual suicide are bluntly foreshadowed, but not really in sad way if, but rather as one of the many angles of a complex and beautiful person who felt his moods more strongly than most.
Since college, I often use a pen as my bookmark and underline passages I like or want to interact with, scribbling a word or two in the margin. This happens every ten or twenty pages in a good book, maybe every couple pages in a really good one (Like Norwegian Wood which I’m re-reading this winter). Well, the four Bourdain books I’ve now read look almost like football play charts, with underlinings, arrows, constant “hehe” and comments in the margins. He evokes, he inspires, and his voice comes through the pages as if I’m watching one of his shows.
In this regard he has a unique advantage over most of us writers who never make the leap from page to screen. I’d already listened to a dozen or more hours of his voice as an occasional viewer of Parts Unknown when I picked up “The Nasty Bits.” I quickly realized that Bourdain wasn’t just a writer, he was a far better writer than an actor. And he was a pretty enthralling actor. But TV is a visual medium where a whole team of people combine to entertain several senses whereas I’d argue that writing is a harder medium to succeed in because it’s just your words and the reader’s imagination. If your words are good, the reader’s imagination tells them a story as if you were both sitting around the campfire (or on a sushi assigned in Tokyo).
In truth I’ve spent the better part of a year focusing on my work in real estate and utterly neglecting my writing to the point of self-sabotage. For good reason, since I quit my job at Bowdoin College and am endeavoring to make ends meet and eventually financial success in self employment. I also haven’t felt inspired to promote or polish my recent book Cyber Fire nor pick up my next book where I left off. I’ve found that inspiration is not required in writing, discipline is. Sometimes it takes a forceful kick in the pants to get back in the saddle. That kick came from Tony from beyond the grave. Of all the hundreds of great lines I’d like to share from an interview at the end of his book Medium Raw that led me to come downstairs and write (underlining mine).
Listen, there are a lot of writers I admire, but I don’t want to sit around talking about writing. First of all, I’m superstitious about it. You talk about writing, you’re giving up—it’s bad juju. Then you become one of the Starbucks people; you talk about writing but you’re actually not doing it. It’s like fucking. Don’t talk about fucking, just fuck. Don’t talk about writing, write.
One of the practices that has helped me, in the words of another favorite writer Nick Offerman, ‘get behind the mule’ is a google spreadsheet where I record my start time, end time, word count and a brief sentence about that day or circumstance. Today’s is the first entry since 10/24/18. Granted, I had a child born in early 2016 and another in late 2017, so more of my free time has been accounted for than in times gone by, but I’ve never thought that family or work should be an excuse not to write (or writing’s much more surly cousin, edit) each day. We each have 15 or 30 minutes that could’ve been better spent. It takes me a few days to get back into the rhythm but I do plan to get back into the chair tomorrow at O’dark hundred and get back to work. 31 words a minute is really fast for me, so I’ll take this as a good sign.