THE ANTHONY BOURDAIN READER

An anthology that ranges across both Bourdain’s core writings and his lesser works.

Bourdain, notes editor Witherspoon, “had wanted to be a writer all his life.” His fame as the host of several television travel series, she adds, was accidental: The gigs were someone else’s idea, but as long as he got to write, it was fine. Some of the pieces assembled here are near-transcripts from those shows, and longtime fans will hear Bourdain’s voice in every word, as when he eats a street taco in the Mexican city of Puebla: “You quickly shove one of the tacos into your mouth, wash it down with a big pull from a can of cold Tecate—which you’ve previously rubbed with lime and jammed into a plate of salt, encrusting the top—and you can feel your eyes roll up into your head.” Elsewhere, alcohol being a constant, Bourdain celebrates a Sardinian wine made by “an old man sitting in the corner reading a soccer magazine, a cigarette dangling from his lips,” and declaring that he wouldn’t trade a trunkful of big-ticket vintages for the rustic red; offers lessons on how to drink vodka in Russia (“knock back your entire shot in one gulp”); and populates his fictions with woozy, boozy characters (“Naturally, work like this required alcohol”). There are other drugs aplenty as well, befitting Bourdain’s longtime worship of Hunter S. Thompson and the culture of restaurant work in the golden 1970s and ’80s: “We thought ourselves dangerous, trend-settingly debauched, and, of course, in no time at all, had made a serious botch of it all.” But whatever his topic, absent a few forgettable pieces of juvenilia, Bourdain delivers whip-smart, mot juste, and funny pronouncements on the world. And never mind that he condones putting ketchup on a hamburger.

A welcome gathering of work by a writer—and traveler, chef, and truth teller—gone too soon.