Customer Reviews

The Informers

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

When a cast of vacuous, narcissistic, bronzed Californians indulges in whatever brings them pleasure, Bret Easton Ellis is at his sardonic, cynical best. Culled from sketches begun in 1983 and eventually filling several notebooks, "The Informers" is more a tale of a group's flawed response to its culture than it is a picture of individuals.

Impossibly empty, the characters are predominantly male students who spend little time at their studies. Flouting their parents' checkbooks, they drive expensive cars, wear extravagantly priced clothes, dine at the trendiest spots, and indulge in most forms of chemical escapism.

Punctuated with dark metaphors, the author's text is hauntingly spare, offering no explanation for the characters' lives but simply presenting them. This leaves the readers to judge, gnash their teeth or gape in shocked surprise. There is room for shock. As in Ellis' "American Psycho," some very unpleasant descriptions of mayhem and murder are included.

In an interview Mr. Ellis commented, "What I've always been interested in as a writer is this idea of a group of people who seem to have everything going for them on the outside. Because of that, they have a lot of freedom. The theme of my fiction is the abuse of that freedom."

With his superior intellect and total mastery of his craft, Mr. Ellis presents his theme well.

- Gail Cooke

Mr. Ellis' strength is in his realistic dialogue and characters, which is well on display here in this collection of character sketches.

I say character sketches, and not short stories, because that's really what they are. A series of interconnected portraits of the different, intermingling layers of society in LA.

And it is pretty impressive at that. Each of the characters in the book are going through very similar feelings, have very similar problems (spiraling depression, enstrangement from their parents, etc.). Luckily, Mr. Ellis is able to differentiate their characters and situations.

As happens with books of this type, the ending seems to rush together more quickly, and feel more connected than the beginning. And frankly, as much respect as I have for Mr. Ellis' writing, it was exhausting to read story after story. The book is an interesting portrait of a city constantly on the edge of destruction, but there's only so much nihilistic fiction a guy can read before you curl up into a ball in the corner.

As always, Ellis is a writer worth reading. But be prepared: it is a short book, but a long haul.

NOTE: The edition I read was not the same as this one (it was much older), and I include my review as I believe that they should be largely the same barring the different cover.

My only previous experience with Ellis' work was the harrowing 'American Psycho,' which still disturbs me with some of its imagery. Thus, I was quite intrigued to see what some of Ellis' next works might have been like, and if any of them continued in the vein that he had established with man being inhumane to other men.

What I got was largely stories which were the snippet equivalent of what *I* considered to be the worst parts of 'American Psycho' - the inane, often disjointed, conversations that rich white folks had with other rich white folks in the early to late 1980's. With characters barely communicating with each other over issues that barely registered on my personal Give-a-Crapometer, I found the stories to be about as vacuous as the characters with them, and took very little away from them.

There was one high point in the collection, and that one was the "vampire story." It certainly wasn't fantastic, but it was different enough that I at least vaguely remember the specifics of the story, if not the title.

Ellis brings something else to short story writing by having all of his characters, like those in his novels, be interconnected to some degree. Characters that show up in one story narrate others, while some of the names and places have appeared before in both "Less than Zero" and "Rules of Attraction."

The order the stories appear in also helps his case here. Placing "At the Still Point" -- a story which introduces four important characters -- at the beginning sets you up right away. Generally, the book picks up speed after "Letters From LA." From here on in, the characters get better, the stories more complex, and the senstionalism ramped up. "Another Gray Area" utilizes a seeminlgly more articulate narrator, or at least one with more personality, while "The Fifth Wheel" presents one of the most disturbing and morally rich stories of the bunch.

All in all, an interesting collection for Ellis fans. For newcomers, I'd recommend starting with "Less than Zero" before coming here.

I have read "Less Than Zero", "The Rules of Attraction" and my favourite, "American Psycho". I have about thirty pages left to read in "The Informers" and I must say that the book is a mixture of all Ellis's other books. For those who say the book lacks a story or even a plot, I would say that they are sadly mistaken. The point of "The Informers" is to take you through the lives of some really twisted people and underscore their naive search for meaning, whether it be in the form of fashion, sex, or drugs and whatever else is the pleasure of the moment. The frustration of living a life devoid of meaning and the inability to discern where one can find substance is found in the Ellis's sexually rapacious vampire character. Here is guy that takes out all of his anger on women, i.e. through his violent sexual escapades and minorities, i.e. his casual, yet caustic references to "niggers" and "gooks". "The Informers" and all of Ellis's other works are windows that give you a snapshot of the nihilisitic children of the 80s. Though I believe that Ellis uses hyperbole in all of the sex, violence and senseless dialogue to get his point across, the goal of his works is to show just how empty and pointless, the life of nihilism really is.

The first book I read by Mr. Ellis was "The Rules of Attraction" and I couldn't believe how unlikable his characters were and how casual they were about sex and drugs and failing school. Well, you can imagine how surprised I was to read this one, which is a collection of vig nettes about horrible, morally-devoid rich and beautiful people in L.A. For some reason, though, it was a relatively easy read, and I kept going back to it, fascinated with how natural the characters spoke about things that would absolutely blow my mind to experience in my own boring life. These characters don't really have worries, and if they do, they're nothing compared to the average person's worries. Somehow, this book ends up making you feel both bummed and enlightened. Probably, for me any way, because you're sorry that there are walking corpses in L.A. who don't care about anything and are affected by nothing, but the enlightenment exists because I can al! so take solace in the fact that I'm not one of them. Mr. Ellis is my favorite author, and I liked the book, but it is definitely not your average reader's cup of tea.

The Informers is a novel composing of fragmentary stories mixing up characters who are distinguished only by their conformity. They are all rich, all tan, all psychically rootless and morally deracinated, and all dysfunctional. They go through life as beneficiaries of capitalism, with no apparent purpose other than to enjoy pleasure in capsule form, take drugs, drink and discuss and 'enjoy' their material wealth. Ellis has done this theme before in his early 20s novels. Reading it is rather like the sensation when you are hungover or exhausted - you are successfully numbed into a world which is not entirely unpleasant, but you can't do anything constructive.

American Psycho, which preceeded this work, was a masterpiece - justly one of the top novels anywhere of the past 20 years. But this novel lacks the arrowing Celine style satirical bite and bats forward cliches of the mindless super rich in capsule form.

Short stories set in the early 1980's, mostly in southern California. The themes that fascinated the young Ellis are here, as are certain foreshadowings of later projects (the vampire cult of serial killers in one story could almost have been precursors of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho). A few of these tales are self-indulgent to the point of them nullifying any quality they possess because of their smothering shallowness, but there are several works here that stand out. Mostly these stories are character sketches and scenarios and lack anything like rigid plotlines. Fans of Bret Easton Ellis should enjoy these early writings but the average person is not going to feel comfortable with the subject matter or the way Ellis at this point of his career was given so much license to write whatever he felt.

Don't get me wrong - Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favorite authors - along with Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So...needless to say having read Ellis many times over, I came in with lofty expectations which sadly went unfulfilled. I read an interview with Ellis where he stated that The Informers was merely a collection of short stories he had been working on for years in between novels when he had writer's block that were basically turned in to satisfy a publishing deadline - he did not expect them to ultimately to be approved for publishing.

Now I know why, Bret. Somewhat enjoyable and recommended strictly for diehard Ellis fans. If you want real Bret Easton Ellis with much more depth, intensity & cohesiveness, pick up The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Less Than Zero or Glamorama - all superb and quintessential Ellis reading.

"Danny is on my bed and depressed because Ricky was picked up by a break-dancer at the Odyssey on the night of the Duran Duran look-alike contest and murdered". If that line dopesn't make you laugh out loud (or at least cringe) than BEE may not be the dude for you. However, if you enjoy the odd Danielle Steel literary epic from time to time, you might want to pick "The Informers" up, post haste. Because BEE has nothiong on DS -- same league, my friends, same league....