Anthony’s treasures and trash
The late Anthony Bourdain, the author of Kitchen Confidential, says one of the benchmarks of great food writing is to be very knowledgeable, but never a snob
WHAT books are on your nightstand?
I’m currently reading
Thomas Ricks’s Churchill and Orwell. Graham Greene’s memoir, Ways of Escape, is a book I’ve read many times, but keep coming back to. John Williams’s Stoner is on top of the stack of to-be-read books, next to Mark Lanegan’s I Am the Wolf, Moravia’s Roman Tales and Agitator, an overview of the films of Takashi Miike.
What’s the last great book you read?
Truly great? Charles Portis’s True Grit is a masterpiece. Don’t settle for seeing the film versions. One of the great heroines of all time and a magnificent book filled with great dialogue.
What influences your decisions about which books to read? Word of mouth, reviews, a trusted friend?
Friends often recommend books, and I’m loyal to authors whose past works I’ve enjoyed.
I’m a hunter of footnotes. If I’m heavily interested in a particular historical subject, I will often track down everything I can find on it. I can disappear down a rat-hole of books on, say, the history of the Congo or special operations in southeast Asia for years. The Kennedy assassination, for instance, took me on a decade-long journey through the history of organised crime, the CIA, French intelligence, the French Algerian conflict, the Vietnam War, Castro’s Cuba and the history of the KGB. I’m like that.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book?
Orwell’s fastidiousness about smell is of interest – and to read of his anti-semitism was dismaying.
What’s the best book about food you’ve ever read?
AJ Liebling’s Between Meals is his memoir of meals in Paris before and after the war, and it’s fantastic. He was an enthusiastic lover of food and wine – very knowledgeable but never a snob. It’s the benchmark for great food writing.
Whose writing most inspires you?
Donald Ray Pollock was a revelation when I first read
The Devil All the Time, as does Daniel Woodrell’s work. Marlon James’s A Brief History of
Seven Killings was incredible, and Lydia Lunch takes no prisoners… ever. I’m inspired by her utter fearlessness. William T Vollmann is intimidating in his sheer volume and courage and ambition. But when I find myself in a hole writing, I always go back to Elmore Leonard, he was a professional. And Edward St Aubyn – his writing thrills me.
What kinds of books bring you the most reading pleasure?
Lengthy histories of arcane subjects. (A definitive re-examination of the Yuri Nosenko case, using newly declassified materials and never before given interviews, would be pure crack for me). A good bio, Ross Macdonald, Nick Tosches writing about Dino, and Lester Bangs.
Which genres do you avoid? Horror and science fiction (other than that by Ballard and Gibson). Also “as told to” memoirs, how-to books and anything spiritual. I also avoid wistful, overly romantic food writing and any spy novel in which the hero carries a gun. I like my spy fiction dreary, realistic and preferably written by a former intelligence officer. Spy novel authors and titles I particularly like include WT Tyler’s The Man Who Lost The War and Rogue’s March. I’ll devour anything by Charles Mccarry. I loved the stories in Ashenden; or the British Agent by W Somerset Maugham.
And, although he’s not an ex-spook like some of the authors mentioned above, David Ignatius’s Agents of Innocence is very, very good.
What’s the last book that made you laugh?
I published it, on my Ecco imprint, Anthony Bourdain Books: Michael Ruffino’s Adios, M *********** .
The last book that made you cry?
It’s been a while. But maybe The Quiet American. That always gets me.
The last book that made you furious?
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. It was such an obvious, transparent, steaming heap of falsehood from the first page that I was enraged that anyone on earth would believe a word. As a former addict, I found this fake redemption. – The New York Times
This article was published in The New York Times By the Book column on November 22.