Week 12 Matrix- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum?

v Highly Narrative

2. What is the subject of the book?

Anthony Bourdain takes the reader on a grimy journey through his life as a chef, highlighting his misadventures while dismissively glorifying a life worked in a restaurant kitchen.  

3. What type of book is it?

Memoir

4. Articulate Appeal

What is the pace of the book?

The pace is leisurely due mostly to the reflective narrative voice, yet there is a sense of quickness to each chapter, most of which feel they could stand alone as a personal essays.

Describe the characters of the book.

Bourdain’s narrative voice is self-deprecating, comic, dark, edgy with sprinkles of lightheartedness or nostalgia. The characters that he introduces in his stories are the modern day equivalent of degenerate pirates who indulge in too much drugs, alcohol, sex and nearly any other deviant activity you can think of.

How does the story feel?

Extremely funny, lurid, unabashed

What is the intent of the author?

To take the reader through a set of memories that center around food, but as we find in our own dinner conversations, food is a great lubricant for conversations about life, love, youth and folly.

What is the focus of the story?

Framing both his own childhood experiences, teenage years, and young adulthood, Bourdain focuses on his love of food as the setting for each moment in the book. Although food is the intended focus of the writing, the most memorable stories are about the experiences making food and the motley kitchen staffs’ interactions.

Does the language matter?

Always, in this case the language is approachable in tone and word selection, yet shocking and absurd at the same time.

Are the settings important and well described?

Absolutely, whether it is his childhood visits to France or the refrigerator in the back of a seafood restaurant the settings are vivid. It is important that the reader feels like they are there to understand the characters and comedy of the events that take place.

Are their details, if so of what?

Bourdain is adept at explaining the physical, emotional, and social details of his interactions with the characters of his memoir. Details range from the mental experiences of heavy drinking and drug use to the hardened hands of cooks who could pull extremely hot baking sheets out of an oven with their bare hands.

Are their extensive charts and other graphic materials? Are they clear?

None.

 Does the book stress moments of learning, understanding, and experience?

Yes, Bourdain’s narrative voice often offers what he learned through the stories he tells, how specific experiences shaped his later life, and his understanding, or lack there-of of the person he has come to be.

Why would a reader enjoy this book?

1. Subject/Author  2. Tone  3. Narrative Nature