REVEIW: The Informers, Bret Easton Ellis, 1994, Picador
Somehow, some way, Bret Easton Ellis has managed to write a book even more disturbing than American Psycho, with half the violence involved.
Yeah, I said it. More disturbing.
But let me explain.
The Informers is set in the muggy metropolis of Los Angeles. There are 13 chapters, all in various lengths, told from a different person's point of view, and all of the character's are in some way inter-connected. Many chapters echo Ellis' earlier works, with chapter one, Bruce Calls from Mulholland, taking on the bored-but-rich style that reader's of Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction would recognise. However, unlike Rules of Attraction and a lesser extent Less Than Zero, The Informers is somewhat devoid of actually likeable characters. Most of them are vapid, cold, uncaring and at times racist. Between the old rock star that cruelly beats groupies and the drugged up couple that kill a small boy, funny and likeable characters are hard to come by. But then, perhaps that is the most shocking thing about this collection of short stories - you don't root for any character, but the stream of consciousness style makes you a voyeur in their lives. You as the reader become a secret observer, and by the end of the collection, you become desperate to know more. Even though the idle rich presented in the book's observations are often wry, obvious and plain boring, it is impossible to not read more. In chapters such as Discovering Japan, which is about Bryan Metro, a sort of Rick Springfield-cum Bryan Ferry, raping, beating, drinking and generally taking every drug he can, you are desperate to see him and his interactions with others. However, the underlying sense of sadness, of regret and melencholly becomes startlingly real- the chapter, the characterization, it all makes you realise that Ellis' true talent is finding the weakness behind great characters and highlighting them.
Bryan Metro is really 'Bryan Everyman', someone old, out of season, on his last legs, in essence lost in a world he no longer belongs to, trying to remain relevant and all the while sort-of failing. He is away from home, away from the comforts of normal life, he is on tour. Therefore, Metro is cut off, in a world of self-preservation - he is the king of his own empire, a place where he can do anything he wants and get away with it. Maybe that's the theme of the collection; these characters are so rich, so beyond normal, that they can do anything anytime and not face consequences- even death is nothing as there are several undead characters throughout. A hint of the supernatural, of forces beyond our control make these short stories more powerful - even in death these people cannot be stopped. Whether they are having sex with underage girls, making racist jokes about Ethiopians, they are still richer, have more fun, do more drugs than you. And it makes you weirdly jealous.
That said, however, there are some stories, too unfortunate, too gruesome to lust after. In The Fifth Wheel great detail is given to the senseless murder of a young boy. Now, readers of American Psycho will know that children are not off-limits to the people of Ellis' decaying world, however the clumsy, drawn out terror of the murder make it more uncomfortable than anything in any of Ellis' previous works. An exerpt:
"The kid is pale and pretty and looks weak and he sees the knife and starts crying, moving his body around trying to escape, and I don't want to do it with the light on so I turn it off and try to stab the kid in the dark but I get freaked out thinking about stabbing him in the dark so I turn the light on..."
And then, for another hundred words or so, dies another child in Los Angeles, another death in the novel, another waste of youth in Ellis' inter-connected world. The remaining chapters seem to pale in comparasin to the frightening detail of The Fifth Wheel, the problems of sleeping together, trying to get more cocaine, anorexia, affairs all fade to the background becaus of this one murder. However, unlike most of the other chapters, the characters Tommy, Peter and Mary disappear and aren't seen in any other story - making this murder, this chapter seem almost worthless, a clever ploy by the writer to make this death unimportant, to make it seem like just another LA day.
After reading the other chapters, many of which seem to fit in with the Less Than Zero landscape of too much money, too much time, the strange, out-from-nowhere depictions of violence are what make this book so entirely shocking. The characters are vicious, vapid, selfish, but wholly intersting. It will leave you with a sense of emptiness because, just like Rules of Attraction, there isn't a beginning or an end, only a middle. It leaves you with a sense of wonder, you try to picture whether this is still going on, where the characters end, whether they ever change; but of course you'll never know. Only Tim Price and Spin feature in any of Ellis' other works, making the stories of Graham, Raymond, Jamie, Tommy, Peter, Bruce, Martin et all that much more spectacular and that much more tragic.
Yeah, I said it. More disturbing.
But let me explain.
The Informers is set in the muggy metropolis of Los Angeles. There are 13 chapters, all in various lengths, told from a different person's point of view, and all of the character's are in some way inter-connected. Many chapters echo Ellis' earlier works, with chapter one, Bruce Calls from Mulholland, taking on the bored-but-rich style that reader's of Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction would recognise. However, unlike Rules of Attraction and a lesser extent Less Than Zero, The Informers is somewhat devoid of actually likeable characters. Most of them are vapid, cold, uncaring and at times racist. Between the old rock star that cruelly beats groupies and the drugged up couple that kill a small boy, funny and likeable characters are hard to come by. But then, perhaps that is the most shocking thing about this collection of short stories - you don't root for any character, but the stream of consciousness style makes you a voyeur in their lives. You as the reader become a secret observer, and by the end of the collection, you become desperate to know more. Even though the idle rich presented in the book's observations are often wry, obvious and plain boring, it is impossible to not read more. In chapters such as Discovering Japan, which is about Bryan Metro, a sort of Rick Springfield-cum Bryan Ferry, raping, beating, drinking and generally taking every drug he can, you are desperate to see him and his interactions with others. However, the underlying sense of sadness, of regret and melencholly becomes startlingly real- the chapter, the characterization, it all makes you realise that Ellis' true talent is finding the weakness behind great characters and highlighting them.
Bryan Metro is really 'Bryan Everyman', someone old, out of season, on his last legs, in essence lost in a world he no longer belongs to, trying to remain relevant and all the while sort-of failing. He is away from home, away from the comforts of normal life, he is on tour. Therefore, Metro is cut off, in a world of self-preservation - he is the king of his own empire, a place where he can do anything he wants and get away with it. Maybe that's the theme of the collection; these characters are so rich, so beyond normal, that they can do anything anytime and not face consequences- even death is nothing as there are several undead characters throughout. A hint of the supernatural, of forces beyond our control make these short stories more powerful - even in death these people cannot be stopped. Whether they are having sex with underage girls, making racist jokes about Ethiopians, they are still richer, have more fun, do more drugs than you. And it makes you weirdly jealous.
That said, however, there are some stories, too unfortunate, too gruesome to lust after. In The Fifth Wheel great detail is given to the senseless murder of a young boy. Now, readers of American Psycho will know that children are not off-limits to the people of Ellis' decaying world, however the clumsy, drawn out terror of the murder make it more uncomfortable than anything in any of Ellis' previous works. An exerpt:
"The kid is pale and pretty and looks weak and he sees the knife and starts crying, moving his body around trying to escape, and I don't want to do it with the light on so I turn it off and try to stab the kid in the dark but I get freaked out thinking about stabbing him in the dark so I turn the light on..."
And then, for another hundred words or so, dies another child in Los Angeles, another death in the novel, another waste of youth in Ellis' inter-connected world. The remaining chapters seem to pale in comparasin to the frightening detail of The Fifth Wheel, the problems of sleeping together, trying to get more cocaine, anorexia, affairs all fade to the background becaus of this one murder. However, unlike most of the other chapters, the characters Tommy, Peter and Mary disappear and aren't seen in any other story - making this murder, this chapter seem almost worthless, a clever ploy by the writer to make this death unimportant, to make it seem like just another LA day.
After reading the other chapters, many of which seem to fit in with the Less Than Zero landscape of too much money, too much time, the strange, out-from-nowhere depictions of violence are what make this book so entirely shocking. The characters are vicious, vapid, selfish, but wholly intersting. It will leave you with a sense of emptiness because, just like Rules of Attraction, there isn't a beginning or an end, only a middle. It leaves you with a sense of wonder, you try to picture whether this is still going on, where the characters end, whether they ever change; but of course you'll never know. Only Tim Price and Spin feature in any of Ellis' other works, making the stories of Graham, Raymond, Jamie, Tommy, Peter, Bruce, Martin et all that much more spectacular and that much more tragic.