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I’m substituting for Belinda.
There are good and bad biographies that are only important if you spend time writing memoirs, or more importantly because famous because of them, rather than offering them up as a counterfactual, revisionist, personal history. In lieu of a suicide note some of us have mourned as fans for Anthony Bourdain. There are several articles and even a CNN feature program about him. The first unauthorized biography leaves something open for an ‘official’ counter narrative, but it is clear that the story will always have gaps up to the moment his end is described, remembered or relitigated by those left alive. The NY Times review told me enough. I won’t buy the book. I think I have enough closure with identifying how difficult a life can be. Maybe there should be an association of impersonal historians.
"When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"
After Anthony Bourdain took his own life in a French hotel room in 2018, his close friends, family and the people who for decades had helped him become an international TV star closed ranks against the swarm of media inquiries and stayed largely silent, especially about his final days.
That silence continued until 2021, when many in his inner circle were interviewed for the documentary “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” and for “Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.” The two works showed a more complex side of Mr. Bourdain, who had become increasingly conflicted about his success and had in his last two years made his relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento his primary focus. But neither directly addressed how very messy his life had become in the months that led up to the night he hanged himself at age 61.
On Oct. 11, Simon & Schuster will publish what it calls the first unauthorized biography of the writer and travel documentarian. “Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain” is filled with fresh, intimate details, including raw, anguished texts from the days before Mr. Bourdain’s death, such as his final exchanges with Ms. Argento and Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, his wife of 11 years who, by the time they separated in 2016, had become his confidante.“
I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job,” Mr. Bourdain wrote to Ms. Busia-Bourdain in one of their near-daily text exchanges. “I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty.”
www.nytimes.com/...
With the advent of inexpensive digital book production in the first decade of the 21st century,[8] the genre exploded. Memoirs written as a way to pass down a personal legacy, rather than as a literary work of art or historical document, are emerging as a personal and family responsibility.[9]
The Association of Personal Historians was a trade association for professionals who assisted individuals, families, and organizations in documenting their life stories.[10] It dissolved in 2017.
en.wikipedia.org/...
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do - well, that's memoirs.- Will Rogers