Tony's unexpected death in June 2018 meant the end of anything new from him.
All that he had ever written, drawn, recorded, or filmed in the world was done.
A complete body of work.
Tony's death also marked the beginning of a years long process of discovery in which I interviewed 91 people who had known him to hear their stories and learn more about him than what he'd already shared in the pages of kitchen confidential, his subsequent works of nonfiction, and on television.
This book is the result of that process.
As his assistant and occasional co author, I thought I'd already gotten to know Tony quite well.
However, in talking with the people who knew him in his youth.
As a wayward college student, a fledgling cook, dedicated beach bum, thrill seeking drug addict, journeyman chef, ambitious young writer, semi reluctant television star, steadfast spouse and father, supportive friend and collaborator, I came to realize that I'd really only known a fraction of who Tony was.
What motivated him, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance.
As he said, once he became famous, you never know the consequences of getting what you want until you get what you want.
When I agreed to be Tonys assistant, id been juggling writing and paycheck type work for many years, and there were times when I grew frustrated with the more mundane aspects of the job.
But if I was going to do the work, I knew there was no one better than Tony to do it for.
And now I feel compelled to add that id gladly trade this life of being a real writer to resume the privileged burden of making his hotel reservations and scheduling his dishwasher maintenance if it meant that Tony could still be here among us.
Barring that, I'll settle for having helped the people he loved tell the following version of his story.
That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the definitive oral biography and is written by Laurie Woolever.
So I've said a number of times before that one of the benefits of reading biographies and autobiographies is not only do you learn a lot from the life experience of somebody else, you get to profit and benefit from that, but at the end you really feel like you know some the person that you read about, you get a sense of who they were as an individual, as a fellow human.
Right?
And that feeling comes after you read the biography.
Out of the over 200 biographies that I've read so far for this podcast, this is the first time where, before I picked up the book, I felt like I knew this person for a decade, maybe even longer.
I was a huge fan of Tony Bourdain's work.