DBC Pierre

First published on 12 Aug 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

Pierre's third novel, Lights Out in Wonderland, follows 25-year-old Gabrielle Brockwell – a bon vivant with a death wish – and his travels from escaping rehab to eating wild fugu in Japan to making the world's most outrageous feast in Berlin. Drug-induced hijinks ensue.

DBC, I imagine Lights Out in Wonderland will go over quite well in Japan, with that crazy octopus sex scene so early on in the book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have some weird sex. They have some very interesting habits in Japan. It's a whole other ballgame over there.

Have you ever thought about just doing a Japanese porn book?
Yeah I did! I actually started one before [Lights Out in Wonderland]. I was writing with the same character a very different, a very decadent book, but a certain way down the track I realised that probably wasn't going to do the publisher any favours, so I stopped and went off on another tangent.

Are you as big a fan of excess as your main character, Gabriel Brockwell?
Yeah but in a much more measured way than I was. I used to be interested in just excess - in oblivion - when I was younger. Whereas now I play a much longer game. I like to observe and really savour things so I can spend many hours without actually having to do very much. Without having to drink, or anything. Just soaking things up.

One of my favourite passages in Lights Out is Brockwell's friend Nelson Smuts cooking a suckling pig in a crematorium. It's one of the best pieces of food writing in a non-food book I've ever read. Is there a real Nelson Smuts?
Smuts is a real guy – an Aussie. He is a chef and he has that character. I won't put the stories on him – obviously he's not in jail in Japan. Just as we speak Smuts is off on some seven-star private yacht in Monte Carlo or something.

A lot of the book is quite food-centric. Did Smuts offer any advice while you were writing?
I actually lived with Smuts - we shared a house years ago. He's the one who infected me with idea of really, really good food and really, really good raw materials. He also has very good contacts with vets and zoologists, so he advised on the recipes for endangered species. If anyone catches those animals they should find [the recipes] work very well.

If there were two dodos left in the world and you had the opportunity to eat one, would you give it a go?
Well no. I wouldn't eat the penultimate dodo in the world. But if, in some back street in Portugal in a corner shop I saw an old dusty tin of dodo, I would.

Have you ever eaten fugu?
Fugu? Yes I have, but nothing really dicey.

Gabrielle Brockwell spends a lot of his time being dictated by the 'Enthusiasms'. What are they, exactly?
The Enthusiasms refer to the passions - to those things inside us that I think psychology today would call compulsion and drive. So at certain moments we go: ‘do you know what? I'm doing that anyway'. It's that little edge that takes you outside of your perfect social model - that is your enthusiasm.

Is Lights Out in Wonderland autobiographical?
It is in many respects, and it became so. It was a very introspective and reclusive time. And having to get into the book was a very, very low time so a lot of these musings on suicide and stuff are from toying with that very thing. Although of course I never set out with any kind of wish like [Gabrielle Brockwell's] I certainly got into the frame of mind of it. Now what I need is a manic phase...

It's time for the Enthusiasms to kick in.
Exactly - I'll write a three-page book that just goes ‘YAAAAHHH'.

And then you can write your Japanese porn.
Yeah exactly - with girls crying on the front of it. This one will have live girls in the vending machine. Myffy Rigby

DBC Pierre is joined by Gareth Liddiard of The Drones at this event.