In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain

by Tom Vitale

At the beginning, at least, I either didn’t mind or didn’t realize how isolating, all-consuming, overstimulating, and morally taxing it could be having “the best job in the world.”

Tony had always been fascinated by Eastern legends of the hungry ghost—a spirit stranded in the netherworld due to a tragic death or lack of a proper burial—and in keeping with everything in his life playing out like a book, movie, or legend, now in some horrific twist of fate he had become a hungry ghost himself.

Tony was hard to be around, and painful to be away from. He was intellectually stimulating beyond compare, and his energy would suck you dry. Frustrating, difficult, and even terrifying at times, but always fascinating, bigger than life.

Always pushing forward, doing the hard thing, even the stupid thing, as long as it was the different thing. Tony was a big believer in failing gloriously in an attempt to do something interesting, rather than succeeding at being mediocre.

He possessed a charisma that made him distinctly accessible, familiar even. His magic radiated out through the television to people he never met. Complete strangers greeted Tony with a sense of intimacy, like they’d either already shared a beer together or, if they offered one now, Tony would just sit down and the two of them would casually pick up the conversation where they left off. It was one of Tony’s super powers, and befitting a man of his complexity and contradictions, it was both a blessing and a curse.

But what I can see now, that I didn’t back then, is that ultimately Tony was a man who was trying his best—to free himself of his analytical mind, to find a belief system that was more forgiving of his spiritual ambivalence, to express his love to the people he cared about, to reconcile the contradictions that embodied his internal and external life and ultimately defined his persona. His best was enough for millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for him.

It took a moment for me to realize how different it was than Tony’s other work. Instead of the curiosity and humor that usually characterized his writing, Tony described himself as wandering from place to place, haunted by crushing loneliness. A lost soul trapped in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction, always longing for more, he was the very embodiment of a hungry ghost.

It was a powerful metaphor for Tony’s life—incomplete and interrupted.