READING VLOG

Mandatory reading for anyone in a career slump. Because Bourdain slumps too. You see his lows. He honors his highs. But the most important factor throughout these tales of the hardest nights with the hardest drugs with the most delicious dishes and the most humbling moments, funny, stressful, too-much-truth-contained is that he keeps going.

It's the drive. The passion. Pure passion. It's all he lives on. And it begs of all of us to do the same. Perhaps chasing dreams is worthwhile in the end. Dreams make man, and man is made here, in name (restaurant signage and resume-build-ups), in history. Legacy.

The book ends here:

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No one needs me to tell them anything about this book, I feel like I'm the last person in the universe to read it. Bourdain is a really good writer and he makes it very hard to criticize him, anything you're going to say he's already said. And yet.

I started out enjoying this a lot but after a while it lost some momentum. More than that, I just started to get tired of the shtick. You know, the macho tough kitchen guy shtick. Bourdain insists that this is how it is and also insists, in the way only a straight white cis man can, that it is not an atmosphere that is targeting women or queer people. No, this is a place where everyone gets attacked, everyone is called out, everyone is insulted. He doesn't seem to get that there's a real difference between being a straight guy in that environment where the language revolves around straight male-ness and when you're not the person being centered in those conversations. Sure a straight guy is going to laugh at another straight guy by using some gay slurs and he'll use the exact same gay slurs against a gay guy, but do you really think those two people are going to hear those slurs the same way? It's shockingly oblivious. To Bourdain's credit, in one chapter he takes down every argument he's made by showing another chef's kitchen where there isn't this hostile atmosphere, but after showing that it doesn't have to be this way he doesn't have a moment of insight or self-reflection, considering the way his whole industry is pushing people out.

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