RIP: Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold
Rob Forbes | 08-28-2018
Jonathan Gold: 1960 – 2018, Anthony Bourdain: 1956 – 2018
My Kind of Activists
It may seem odd timing to be writing this delayed note on the deaths of these two people. Two months have gone by, and maybe there is not too much I can say that has not already been said about the lives and work of these two food and culture icons. But here goes.
Bourdain was a CNN journalist and celebrity – a household name, and cool enough to eat Vietnamese café food with Barack Obama. His series Parts Unknown broke from the standard reality food TV series formula. He just received multiple posthumous Emmy’s for his work this week. If you don’t know Bourdain the writer, his Kitchen Confidential is a five star introduction.
Jonathan Gold, a food critic for the LA Times, is less well known. In 2006, he won the first ever Pulitzer Prize for food Criticism. His weekly column in the LA Times, Counter Intelligence, leaves a formidable and penetrating humorous legacy. He was respected enough to be the subject of a documentary film, City of Gold, released in 2016 – a tasty 90-minute introduction to his full persona. Like Bourdain, he was a multi-talented, complex human being.
They were both modern heroes of mine. I never met either of them and knew them only through their writings and popular media. But their deaths still surface in my mind almost daily. Why?
First, they searched for beauty and meaning in the common stuff, and they wrote well, both pursuits that are very important to me.
Next, they were uncommonly humble characters in a celebrity driven industry loaded with egos – the opposite of food writers who enjoy being more critical than supportive. If you were seated next to either for dinner, they would probably have been as curious about you as about the food and wine pairings.
What seems especially vital and valuable today is that their work is a forceful and creative form of political and social activism. Bourdain and Gold stand out as citizens who actually made a positive difference to many ordinary human lives. They did a lot to support diversity – more than most politicians, who talk a lot but do very little. It is easier to rail against bad food, racism, or neo-nationalism than it is to actually do something constructive about it.
Using food as their medium for teaching us about culture and about ourselves, they broke down walls, were politically correct by not worrying about being politically correct, and kept modern media real. They were an antidote to grandstanding, foodie elitism and gentrification.
Bourdain and Gold also did as much to raise the status of immigrants as anyone I can think of – drawing attention to their work, going deep into their sensibilities, and sending customers to their counters and countries.
In a trenchant obit to Bourdain, written on June 8th a month before he himself died, Gold described Bourdain’s work like this:
“Anthony Bourdain opened the working-class kitchen to the world and the world to us. … His best pieces tended to be not about great chefs, but about people like the cook who cut every piece of fish served at a three-star gastronomic temple but who had never eaten in the restaurant.”
— Jonathan Gold
And Gold once described his own work as “trying to get people to be less afraid of their neighbors.’ From one of the many tributes in the LA Times.
“He chose his words carefully.… He never hit below the belt. It felt like one artist reviewing another. But whether he liked something or not, there was always a respect there. And that was powerful.”
— Corinne Purtill, Quartz.com
How we cope with, and process, their deaths is highly individual, of course. Bourdain’s suicide prompted many emails from friends, most relating his suicide to their own exposure to depression. We might not know him, but we know his restlessness and doubts, and are perhaps not completely unfamiliar with his demons. Gold died from pancreatic cancer so quickly that many of his friends were not aware of his illness.
They remind us to appreciate food for more than taste and that what we eat, and the way we eat, might be the measure of our civility. We can honor them by going about our work, as they did, authentically, keeping it real, and by taking some risks that benefit others.
These were two men who were original, curious, and unfailingly humane. These are uncommon traits in the media world today and they will be missed.
