March 29, 2010, 9:56 AM |
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I wrote a book recently and in the months long period between putting the last period on the last page and publication, there’s a gathering dread.
- What is it I’ve just written?
- What’s it about?
Presumably, I’ll have to answer those questions soon — in interviews, on book tour, when the whole machinery starts up again and begins clanking away full-speed. I thought-when I was writing the thing that it was a gentler thing I was making, a reflection of my more……philosophical outlook these days: an examination of the changes in the world of professional cooking (and the changes in my life) in the ten years since I sat down to write “Kitchen Confidential” in a white heat each morning before going in to work at Les Halles.
Continue reading: Cloud Nine »
Posted By: anthony bourdain
March 13, 2010, 9:39 AM |
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I’ve been to what? Eighty, ninety countries?
I’ve seen a lot of things.
But no place has so utterly confounded me, intimidated, horrified, amazed, sickened, depressed, inspired, exhausted and shown me–with every passing hour–how wrong I was about everything I might have thought only an hour previous. This is a country, founded by freed slaves from America–and intended to be very much in our image– but recently emerged from civil wars so brutal, so surrealistically violent as to defy imagining, where drugged gunmen in wedding gowns and wigs once shot hacked (and frequently cannibalized) their way into power. It is also a place where mothers and grandmothers stripped off their clothes and naked and unarmed, confronted those same gunmen mid-massacres, getting them to stop. It is now the first African nation with a woman president. It’s a country where you find 28 year olds proudly graduating from high school–the school system having evaporated during the many years of conflict. There’s a church on nearly every corner–but underneath it all, traditional “masked societies” still rule the hearts and minds and behaviors of many…
Continue reading: Red Dust »
Posted By: anthony bourdain
March 13, 2010, 8:39 AM |
Comments (4,673) |
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I’ve been to what? Eighty, ninety countries?
I’ve seen a lot of things.
But no place has so utterly confounded me, intimidated, horrified, amazed, sickened, depressed, inspired, exhausted and shown me–with every passing hour–how wrong I was about everything I might have thought only an hour previous. This is a country, founded by freed slaves from America–and intended to be very much in our image– but recently emerged from civil wars so brutal, so surrealistically violent as to defy imagining, where drugged gunmen in wedding gowns and wigs once shot hacked (and frequently cannibalized) their way into power. It is also a place where mothers and grandmothers stripped off their clothes and naked and unarmed, confronted those same gunmen mid-massacres, getting them to stop. It is now the first African nation with a woman president. It’s a country where you find 28 year olds proudly graduating from high school–the school system having evaporated during the many years of conflict. There’s a church on nearly every corner–but underneath it all, traditional “masked societies” still rule the hearts and minds and behaviors of many…
Continue reading: Red Dust »
Posted By: anthony bourdain
