Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Sopherblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today I'm

happy to have as my guest, DBC Pierre. He's the author of Vernon God Little, published

by Canongate. It's the book that won the Booker Prize this year. I'm talking to him

in a NPR studio in New York City, but we met around seven days ago to have dinner and to facilitate

the possibility of talking over the airwaves. I wanted to begin by talking about the names in this book,

because not only is your own name a pseudonym, but throughout the book, the characters

mistake one another's names. Some of the people call the hero Vermin. Some of them call him

Bernie. But naming seems to be, and the hero Vermin. Some of them call him Bernie.

But naming seems to be, and the confusion is resulting from naming,

a big thing that goes on in this book.

Could you talk a little about it?

Absolutely.

There are flexible names in the book.

In fact, the whole question of words is quite flexible.

It's interesting to note that Vernon does get a few different monikas throughout the story,

and he gives himself a few, you will have noted as well,

substituting the Gregory in the middle of his name for various different things,

...