On Reading Tony Bourdain on an Alaskan Cruise

Sitting poolside on an Alaskan cruise ship, munching watermelon and chili con queso. Sarah wants to go downstairs to wash the fish guts off her sneakers, complements of today’s fishing trip. On stage, a Vietnamese rock band, seemingly on tour since the fall of Saigon, bounces their way through the Ventures, Carly Simon, and the Carpenters. Watching the two middle-aged singers, watusi-ing and frugging in floppy hats and giant sunglasses it is too easy to channel the cynicism of Tony Bourdain and wonder just what the fuck I am doing here. What deep font of self-loathing and misguided enthusiasm has put me here among the 2300 seniors, foreigners, teenagers, and earnest Iowans for an all-you can eat voyage up the Inside Passage.

That’s the problem with Bourdain. Read anything of his and he will lodge inside your head, poking out the moment when you find your conduct diametrically opposed to your rationalizations. When you need that dark angel sitting on your shoulder whispering, “just what the fuck do you think you are doing?” there he is, full of Nueva York testosterone, to turn a cynical and knowing eye on whatever enthusiam you are currently pursuing.

His latest book, Medium Raw, finds Tony in good form,turning that white hot eye on himself. He is honest on the limits of his own kitchen career and his own success with Kitchen Confidential, and reminds us that he did write three (pretty decent in my opinion) novels before Kitchen Confidential. He looks at the careers of Emeril, Mario, Rachel Sandra with an honest and insightful eye. He manages to convey the end of his first marriage with something resembling an even-handed look. These are the pieces that you have to read.

The other parts, not so much. He is mostly entertaining and almost always interesting, but some of the pieces have that slogging, one word after another “I’m-not-going-to-fuck-this-up” feeling of a professional writer empty of inspiration and on a deadline. A feeling with which I am not unfamiliar.

And some parts are simply bitchy. He covers Michael Pollan territory without doing more adding a little gonzo disgust. He goes after Alan Richman for some seemingly egregious reporting about New Orleans and some friends of Tony’s. Now my sister, who seems to know everyone, knows Richman and had him sign a book to me, but I only know him from his words. And through his words, Alan and I are, could be, feel like friends. So, with one friend going after another, for reasons real or not, this seems like everything bitchy you’ve heard about the New York writing scene.

Still, like everything Bourdain does, there are redeeming moments. Like this cruise. On my day trip to one of the islands across from Ketchikan, I watch an eagle glide twenty feet in front of me. A brown seal suns on a point of rock. Our guide points out the young trees that grow on fallen yellow cedar mother-trees, sending roots through the downed giants to end up growing an exposed root system housing martins and stranded hikers like some science fiction ecosystem. Day three of our journey and our party is reeling. Time to read a little more Bourdain and hit the Asian breakfast buffet.