On the first page of the first chapter of his unauthorised and unflinching new biography of Anthony Bourdain, Charles Leerhsen paraphrases George Orwell’s remark that saints should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Later, Leerhsen makes a more explicit case for pursuing an unvarnished portrait of the beloved chef, writer, and television host. “[W]hen we try to pick and choose the lessons to take from a life,” he argues, “we begin to construct a lie – in this case, a lie about a man singularly devoted to truth and opposed to pretension and public relations.”
If Leerhsen sounds a bit defensive, it’s not out of nowhere. Down and Out in Paradise – which contains unflattering details about Bourdain and quotes private communications from the final days, and hours, before his suicide in 2018 – has been the subject of a nasty controversy that started before it even came out. Bourdain’s younger brother, Christopher Bourdain, has accused the book of being defamatory, and many of Bourdain’s friends and colleagues declined to speak to Leerhsen.
