安瑟尼·波登：講出真相的反叛美食家

1997年，波登在他紐約的公寓廚房裡準備飯菜。JACK MANNING/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Anthony Bourdain entered the literary stage with an inside tip, delivered in the gruff whisper of a racetrack tout: Don』t order fish on Mondays.

安瑟尼·波登(Anthony Bourdain)的文字生涯始於一則內幕消息，他用透露小道消息的低沉語調惡狠狠地說：周一不要點魚。

It was the part that everybody remembered from his first published work, a long essay about the unglamorous and sometimes unsavory work of cooks and dishwashers that ran in The New Yorker in 1999 and that made it almost impossible for waiters to sell seafood between Sunday and Tuesday for at least a decade.

所有人都記住了他發表的第一篇文章中的這句話。那是1999年的一篇《紐約客》長文，介紹的是廚師和洗碗工的那些不怎麼光彩的、有時難以下咽的工作。那篇文章導致在至少十年的時間裡，讓餐館服務生幾乎不可能在周日和周二之間賣出海鮮。

And the advice gave Mr. Bourdain, a journeyman cook and chef nobody had heard of, a new career. Before he was found dead on Friday, in what the authorities were treating as a suicide, he was the witty, connected guide who, in memoirs, cookbooks and television shows, would tell you things that others wouldn』t.

這條建議讓波登——一個談不上才華橫溢的熟練廚子，一個沒人聽說過的大廚——開啟了一個全新的事業。周五，他被人發現死於酒店房間里——當局目前將案件定性為自殺。在此之前，他是一個風趣、交際廣泛的導遊。他通過回憶錄、烹飪書和電視節目告訴你一些其他人不會說的東西。

In the glossy, cheerful, relentlessly promotional realms of food and travel writing, that left him a fair number of truths he could claim as his own, and he took full advantage of the situation.

在光鮮、歡快、宣傳意味十足的美食和旅行寫作領域，這讓他掌握了大量可以說屬於他自己的真相。他充分利用了這一點。

A close reader of Orwell, he modeled that first essay and the book that grew out of it, 「Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,」 on Orwell』s 「Down and Out in Paris and London.」 While other restaurant writers had helped build the cult of the creative, artistic chef, Mr. Bourdain made folk heroes out of the dishwasher and the line cook — a job description previously known only to restaurant employees. He described their lives and their day-to-day work in concrete, indelible detail.

他深入地研究過奧威爾的作品，並仿照奧威爾的《巴黎倫敦落魄記》(Down and Out in Paris and London)寫出了自己的第一篇文章，以及由此文發展而成的書——《廚房機密檔案》(Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)。別的美食作家在營造對富有創意和藝術性的大廚的崇拜，波登卻讓洗碗工和幫廚成了平民英雄——在此之前，只有餐廳員工知道這些人的工作內容。他通過具體的、令人難以忘懷的細節，描寫了他們的生活和日常工作。

When kitchens were being wrapped in a shimmering gauze of glamour, Mr. Bourdain got busy unwrapping them, revealing the injuries and addictions, low wages and high tempers that took a toll on workers.

當廚房籠罩在耀眼的光環之中時，波登忙於撥開這些光環，揭露嚴重損害餐廳員工的傷病和嗜癮、低薪和火爆脾氣。

Among other things, he was one of the first writers to tell the dining public that many high-profile New York restaurants would cease to function without the work and talents of Mexican employees. It was almost a casual aside, yet it suddenly opened new subjects to the purview of food writing: immigration policy, labor conditions, racism.

此外，他還最早告訴食客，如果沒有墨西哥員工的工作和才華，紐約很多知名餐廳都會停業。那幾乎是一句隨意的旁白，但突然為美食寫作領域開啟了新的主題：移民政策、勞工狀況、種族主義。

He identified with the grunts, portraying himself as a slinger of cheap steaks and French fries. The grunts, in turn, identified with him, not because of his contributions as a chef — who can name an Anthony Bourdain dish? — but because he told the world what the work was really like. And once he left kitchens behind for a career in travel television, he didn』t lead his camera crews on a tour of the world』s most luxurious resorts. He went to Detroit and the Bronx, Libya and Beirut.

他同情那些做粗活的人，把自己描繪成一個嗜好廉價牛排和薯條的人。反過來，他們也理解他，這不是因為他作為一名大廚的貢獻——誰能說出一道安瑟尼·波登的菜？——而是因為他向全世界說出了這份工作的真實面目。當他離開廚房，進入旅遊電視行業時，他沒有帶領攝製組探訪全球最豪華的度假勝地。他去的是底特律、紐約布朗克斯、利比亞和貝魯特。

「Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay,」 he wrote in the opening sentence of that New Yorker piece, and it set the tone for all the work that followed.

「好的食物，好的飲食，都跟血和器官、殘忍和腐壞有關，」他在《紐約客》那篇文章的開頭寫道。這為他以後的所有作品奠定了基調。

Mr. Bourdain was a blood-and-organs kind of guy, and he became identified with his unflinching, at times ostentatious, descriptions of life, death, sex and digestion. Footage of fly-speckled goats』 heads in open-air markets was to his travel shows what harbor sunsets were for other programs.

波登是那種關注血和器官的人，他以對生命、死亡、性和消化毫不收斂、時有浮誇的描寫聞名。他的旅行節目的典型鏡頭是露天市場上落滿蒼蠅的山羊頭，就像其他節目中的海灣日落。

Although he wasn』t immune to hyperbole, he had an old-school chain-smoking newspaper editor』s hatred of self-serving hypocrisy, particularly in other television hosts. He delighted in mocking celebrity chefs like Guy Fieri (whose Times Square restaurant he called 「the Terrordome」) and Paula Deen (「the worst, most dangerous person to America」).

雖然他難免也會誇張，但他具有一個一根接一根抽煙的老派報紙編輯對自私偽善的憎恨，尤其是對其他電視主持人。他喜歡嘲笑名廚，比如蓋伊·菲耶里（Guy Fieri，他說菲耶里在時報廣場的餐廳是「恐怖穹頂」）和葆拉·迪恩（Paula Deen，他說她是「美國最壞、最危險的人」）。

At times Mr. Bourdain』s capacity as truth-teller could bleed into other, less salutary roles: the attention-seeking bully, the purveyor of well-polished shtick, the lecture-circuit fixture who, on cue, would curse like a line cook who has just chopped off the tip of his finger.

有時，波登講真話的能力會滲透到他的其他那些不那麼有益的角色中：喜歡被人關注的惡霸；精心打磨的滑稽風格的提供者；巡迴演講的常客，一逮到機會，他就會像剛切到指尖的幫廚一樣破口大罵。

「I do a lot of speaking engagements and sometimes I feel like I』m being paid to curse in front of people who haven』t heard it in a while,」 he said in a 2008 interview.

「我做了很多演講，有時我覺得我就是靠著在觀眾面前罵髒話賺錢，那些觀眾已經有一段時間沒聽到髒話了，」他在2008年的一次採訪中說。

In the past few months, as accusations of sexual harassment and predatory behavior have shaken the restaurant industry, Mr. Bourdain』s swaggering accounts of kitchen life have come in for re-evaluation. He certainly took pleasure in telling outsiders what it was like. Was there some pride in there, too, in belonging to a band of misfits and rule-breakers? Had he helped to popularize a workplace culture in which misogyny and abuse were overlooked, tolerated and sometimes even celebrated?

在過去的幾個月里，隨著對性騷擾和掠奪行為的指控動搖餐飲業，波登對廚房生活的狷狂陳述也開始被重新評價。他顯然以告訴外人廚房裡的情況為樂。他是否以自己被歸為不合群、不守規矩的一類人為榮？他是否幫助推廣了一種職場文化，在這種文化中，對女性的歧視和虐待被忽視、容忍，有時甚至被讚美？

「To the extent which my work in 『Kitchen Confidential』 celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we』re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse,」 he wrote on Medium in December.

「我每天都帶著深深的悔恨思考，我在《廚房機密檔案》中寫的那些東西，多大程度上是在讚美或延續那種容許可怕行為的文化，」去年12月，他在Medium上寫道。

Having regularly heaped disgust and outrage on Harvey Weinstein (who was accused of rape by Asia Argento, Mr. Bourdain』s partner), he was also confronted with serious and deeply unsettling allegations about Mario Batali, a friend. 「In these current circumstances, one must pick a side,」 Mr. Bourdain wrote. 「I stand unhesitatingly and unwaveringly with the women.」

他經常對哈維·韋恩斯坦（Harvey Weinstein，波登的伴侶艾莎·阿基多[Asia Argento]指控韋恩斯坦強姦了她）表示厭惡和憤怒，但他也面臨著對他的朋友馬里奧·巴塔利(Mario Batali)的非常令人不安的嚴重指控。「在目前的情況下，人們必須選擇立場，」波登寫道。「我毫不猶豫、毫不動搖地站在這些女性這一邊。」

But if the feminist perspective was relatively new to his repertory, speaking out about sexual abuse was not. Long ago, in 「Kitchen Confidential,」 he had written about a union shop steward who had inserted his fingers into Mr. Bourdain』s rectum every day, in front of the other kitchen workers. Experiences like this may be common for male cooks, but they are not commonly discussed in public.

但是，如果說女性主義觀點對他來說是相對較新的固定話題，那麼，公開談論性侵犯對他來說並不新鮮。他很久以前就在《廚房機密檔案》里提到，一個工會代表每天都當著其他廚房工人的面把手指插進波登的直腸。這樣的經歷對男性廚師來說可能很常見，但很少有人公開討論。

Mr. Bourdain was too unsettled, his moral compass too twitchy, to have written an account of kitchen life that was purely celebratory or purely accusatory.

波登太不安了，他的道德羅盤太緊張了，以至於在講述廚房生活時，他不會進行純粹的稱讚或指責。

「Life is complicated. It』s filled with nuance. It』s unsatisfying,」 he once said. 「If I believe in anything, it is doubt.」

「生活很複雜。充滿微妙的東西。讓人很不爽，」他曾經表示。「你要是問我信什麼，我會說，我只相信懷疑。」

作者：PETE WELLS

翻譯：紐約時報中文網

下載客戶端

喜歡這篇文章嗎？立刻分享出去讓更多人知道吧！