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By the Book

Anthony Bourdain: By the Book

Anthony Bourdain Credit...Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

The author of “Kitchen Confidential” says one of the benchmarks of great food writing is to be very knowledgeable, but never a snob.

What books are on your nightstand?

I’m currently reading Thomas Ricks’s “Churchill and Orwell.” Graham Greene’s memoir, “Ways of Escape,” is a book I’ve read many times but keep coming back to. John Williams’s “Stoner” is on top of the stack of “To Be Read” books, next to Mark Lanegan’s “I Am the Wolf,” Moravia’s “Roman Tales” and “Agitator,” an overview of the films of Takashi Miike.

What’s the last great book you read?

Truly great? Charles Portis’s “True Grit” is a masterpiece. Don’t settle for seeing the film versions. One of the great heroines of all time and a magnificent book filled with great dialogue.

What influences your decisions about which books to read? Word of mouth, reviews, a trusted friend?

Friends often recommend books, and I’m loyal to authors whose past works I’ve enjoyed. I’m a hunter of footnotes. If I’m heavily interested in a particular historical subject, I will often track down everything I can find on it. I can disappear down a rathole of books on, say, the history of the Congo or special operations in Southeast Asia for years. The Kennedy assassination, for instance, took me on a decade-long journey through the history of organized crime, the C.I.A., French intelligence, the French Algerian conflict, the Vietnam War, Castro’s Cuba and the history of the K.G.B. I’m like that.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Orwell’s fastidiousness about smell is of interest. And to read of his anti-Semitism was dismaying.

What’s the best book about food you’ve ever read?

A. J. Liebling’s “Between Meals” is his memoir of meals in Paris before and after the war, and it’s fantastic. He was an enthusiastic lover of food and wine, very knowledgeable but never a snob. It’s the benchmark for great food writing.

Whose writing today most inspires you?

Donald Ray Pollock was a revelation when I first read “The Devil All the Time.” Daniel Woodrell’s work. Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings” was incredible. Lydia Lunch takes no prisoners … ever. I’m inspired by her utter fearlessness. William T. Vollmann is intimidating in his sheer volume and courage and ambition. But when I find myself in a hole writing? I always go back to Elmore Leonard, he was a professional. And Edward St. Aubyn. His writing thrills me.

What kinds of books bring you the most reading pleasure these days?

Lengthy histories of arcane subjects. (A definitive reexamination of the Yuri Nosenko case, using newly declassified materials and never before given interviews, would be pure crack for me.) A good bio. Ross Macdonald. Nick Tosches writing about Dino. Lester Bangs.

Which genres do you avoid?

Horror. Science fiction (other than that by Ballard and Gibson). “As told to” memoirs. How-to books. Anything spiritual. Wistful, overly romantic food writing. Any spy novel in which the hero carries a gun. I like my spy fiction dreary, realistic and preferably written by a former intelligence officer. Spy novel authors and titles I particularly like include W. T. Tyler’s “The Man Who Lost The War” and “Rogue’s March.” I’ll devour anything by Charles McCarry. I loved the stories in “Ashenden: Or the British Agent” by W. Somerset Maugham. And though he’s not an ex-spook like the above, David Ignatius’s “Agents of Innocence” is very, very good.

What’s the last book that made you laugh?

I published it, on my Ecco imprint, Anthony Bourdain Books: Michael Ruffino’s “Adios, ________.”

The last book that made you cry?

It’s been a while. But maybe “The Quiet American.” That always gets me.

The last book that made you furious?

James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces.” It was such an obvious, transparent, steaming heap of falsehood from the first page that I was enraged that anyone on earth would believe a word. As a former addict, I found this fake redemption memoir to be morally repugnant.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I don’t know. I’m a big Eve Babitz fan. I have everything she ever wrote. Sarah Bakewell’s “How to Live,” on the life and work of Montaigne, is a book I love. I stole a tattoo design from it. The collected works of Milton Caniff and “The Wind in the Willows,” a classic I loved as a child.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

Fictional hero? Maybe Fowler from “The Quiet American.” Or the Consul from “Under the Volcano. Favorite anti-hero? Maybe Eddie from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” or Vaughn from “Crash.” Villain? You can hardly do better than Karla from le Carré’s “Smiley’s People.”

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I was a fast, voracious and precocious reader as a child. I loved stories of adventure and lurid horror. Poe loomed large — particularly “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.” I also loved “Treasure Island” and Jules Verne.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

His daily intelligence brief would be a great start.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

George Orwell, William S. Burroughs and Joan Didion.

If you could tell someone else’s life story, whose would it be?

B. Traven. But first I’d need to know something about him. He remains a mystery.

What do you plan to read next?

Tolstoy is a big, gaping hole in my education. I’d like to read “War and Peace.” I’m ashamed I haven’t yet. And I’ve got a pile of manuscripts I’m considering for my imprint.

Who would you want to write your life story?

I already wrote it. And though I don’t really care about what people say about me when I’m gone, I guess Jerry Stahl would make an entertaining — if not necessarily flattering — story of the gruesome details.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Page 8 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Anthony Bourdain. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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