According to the author of a contentious new book on the late famous chef Anthony Bourdain, who spent his last days drinking and sleeping with prostitutes, he “had pushed himself into a condition of exquisite anguish.”
The book, written by Charles Leerhsen, recounts the chef’s turbulent last days before taking his own life and utilizes documents, messages, and emails from Bourdain’s personal laptop and phone to depict his life.
According to Leehrsen, who describes Bourdain’s battles with addiction and heartache over Italian actress Asia Argento, “I suppose in his final days he had pushed himself into a condition of exquisite anguish.”
With regard to his book, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, Leehrsen said, “If I’ve written an unauthorized biography, I’ve also written a sympathetic one and I’ve written one I believe is truthful to the guy.”
Although Argento and Bourdain’s brother are opposed to the publication of the “unauthorized” biography, Leehrsen defended his work as “sympathetic” and “authentic to the guy,” and it will be available on October 11.
According to Christopher Bourdain, Anthony Bourdain’s brother, “Every single thing he writes about relationships and interactions inside our family as kids and as adults he manufactured or got utterly incorrect.”
Argento and Christopher Bourdain could not be contacted for more comment about the book’s release.
With all due respect, we disagree that the content in the book includes derogatory information, and we stand by our upcoming release. We wrote a publishing executive in response to Bourdain’s brother.
According to the New York Times, Leehrsen thinks that several members of Bourdain’s closest circle declined to talk with him for the book because the chef’s longtime agent, Kim Witherspoon, instructed them not to.
The memoir traces Bourdain’s development from a young man from New Jersey to the renowned but troubled chef who became famous for his travel and culinary writing.
While on site recording his CNN program, Parts Unknown, in June 2018, the TV personality committed himself to a hotel room in France. At the time, he seemed to be quite unhappy.
He berated his supporters in a text message to his ex-wife Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, writing, “I despise my fans, too. I detest having fame. I despise my work.
Busia-Bourdain had grown to be a confidante for Bourdain in his dying days, and she is not opposing the book’s release. Currently, she is in charge of Bourdain’s estate.
Until his death, he confessed to Busia-Bourdain, to whom he had been married for 11 years before their divorce in 2016, that “I am lonely and living in continual uncertainty.”
Argento, who had just abandoned Bourdain after an altercation over pictures of her with a French journalist in Rome, was also “hopelessly” in love with him.
He was the reason for her breakup because of his “possession” of her.
Photos showing the Italian actress dancing with journalist Hugo Clement in the foyer of the Hotel de Russie in Rome, where she and Bourdain had fond memories, had devastated Bourdain.
He conducted “hundreds” of further internet searches for her name, according to the book.
He enquired in their last communication, “Is there anything I can do?”
‘Stop crushing my balls,’ she said.
After saying, “OK,” he subsequently killed himself.
For the book, Argento refuses to comment. It is always Judas who writes the biography, she allegedly told the writer in an email to the journalist.