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Acqua dal sole
Figli ricchi e viziati di genitori mai cresciuti, rockstar invasate in tour mondiale, star della televisione effimere e vacue, lettere scritte per non ottenere alcuna risposta, amori impossibili vissuti nei brevi momenti di una gita allo zoo, vampiri che guidano la Porsche, malviventi maldestri e apatici ma non per questo meno crudeli, ragazzi morti in un incidente stradale o ragazze che stanno per morire di cancro. Come in una galleria - in cui il decennio maledetto che ha travolto ogni certezza viene catturato nella sua posa venefica - questi ritratti spettrali, freddi e precisi come un videoclip, ricostruiscono l'iconografia di una umanità assediata dall'indifferenza, tra droghe, sesso e abusi a non finire.
Lo sguardo tagliente di Bret Easton Ellis ci presenta una commedia umana degli orrori che si cristallizza in una rigorosa limpidezza formale, fra dialoghi indimenticabili e una descrizione spietata della disgregazione sociale attorno a cui emerge un'intera generazione, risucchiata dal crollo di tutti i valori.
Lo sguardo tagliente di Bret Easton Ellis ci presenta una commedia umana degli orrori che si cristallizza in una rigorosa limpidezza formale, fra dialoghi indimenticabili e una descrizione spietata della disgregazione sociale attorno a cui emerge un'intera generazione, risucchiata dal crollo di tutti i valori.
228 pages, Paperback
First published July 26, 1994
About the author
Bret Easton Ellis
36 books12.8k followersBRET EASTON ELLIS is the author of Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, The Informers, Glamorama, Lunar Park, and Imperial Bedrooms. His works have been translated into twenty-seven languages. Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, and The Informers have all been made into films. He lives in Los Angeles.
source: Amazon
source: Amazon
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February 19, 2026
PUNTO MORTO
”The Informers – Vite oltre il limite” di Gregor Jordan, 2008.
Romanzo in tredici racconti ambientato nella prima metà degli anni Ottanta che per “Twitter” Easton Ellis sono inizio e fine di tutto, inferno ed estasi, fonte d’ogni male e perversione.
Non riesce a staccarsene, è rimasto inchiodato a quel periodo.
Chi spicca in un racconto diventa marginale nel successivo, a volte l’io narrante, (c’è sempre, ogni racconto è scritto in prima persona singolare) è un lui e a volte è una lei, non sembra far differenza, la voce rimane uguale, i personaggi sono più o meno gli stessi che entrano ed escono dai diversi racconti, e la sensazione è quella dello stesso quadro, di un romanzo frammentato in capitoli.
Alcuni personaggi ritornano perfino in altre opere scritte dopo da “Twitter” Easton Ellis, come se fossero particolarmente illuminati e meritevoli del suo affetto e interesse.
Il sesso è diffuso, non è particolarmente appassionato, spesso bisex, a volte a tre, ha l’aria più di uno sport che di un desiderio, più di una cosa che si deve fare per status symbol che di attrazione.
Altri aspetti diffusi sono le droghe, d’ogni tipo, da quelle che si schizzano in vena a quelle altre che si aspirano passando per quelle che si ingoiano, vuoi comprate in farmacia o procurate dal pusher.
Il tutto è sempre innaffiato da generose dosi alcoliche, d’ogni tipo, miscelate shakerate, agitate, spruzzate, rigorosamente molto fredde, possibilmente dolci e frizzanti.
E un po’ perché si tratta di quell’epoca, un po’ perché si tratta di “Twitter” Easton Ellis, anche questo è un romanzo di deformazione: all’inizio appaiono tutti belli, ricchi, sani, disinvolti, la perfetta (simulazione) della felicità – man mano diventano sempre più infelici, malati, distrutti, smarriti, soli e disgregati.
In realtà sono ricchi, viziati, gran frequentatori di pusher e farmacisti, si svegliano all’una, mangiano pizza al caviale o ordinano cibi costosi che lasciano sul piatto, passano il pomeriggio a bordo piscina, girano con decapottabili inglesi o tedesche o di Maranello, bevono fino a stordirsi, o stordire qualcun altro, si preoccupano essenzialmente del proprio ombelico e dintorni, di rado lo sguardo si solleva da quella zona, passano da una festa a un party a un concerto a un cocktail a una discoteca, e via di questo passo, con un numero di sigarette fumate accese e spente che paragonate al rigore antifumo attuale fa davvero stridore.
I genitori sono per lo più antipatici ai figli, e i figli sono per la maggior parte irrilevanti per i genitori.
Provano zero empatia e ne suscitano altrettanta. Anzi, less than zero, proprio come l’esordio letterario di “Twitter” Easton Ellis.
Tutti e tutto sono raccontati e descritti immergendo la tastiera nel gelo.
I dialoghi vanno avanti dall’inizio alla fine all’inizio che segue intervallati da descrizioni che sembrano banali e senza importanza (ma banale e senza importanza è la vita di queste persone) che sono il regno del presente indicativo: vado, esco, torno, mangio, mi alzo… anche quando sta raccontando un episodio del passato (flashback?), “Twitter” Easton Ellis usa il presente.
Il ritmo latita, o meglio, sono le variazioni di ritmo a latitare: perché invece un incessante martellamento tra l’ossessivo e il ripetitivo (monotono) si può avvertire pur cercando di evitarlo.
E finalmente, ben oltre la metà del libro, appare il vampiro sbandierato nella bandella. Anzi, vampiri. Ed è il momento clou, il migliore anche per me. La metafora è trasparente. E i vampiri, che assomigliano in tutto e per tutto al resto dell’umanità qui dipinta, se non altro sono più ‘sinceri’, più trasparenti: dissanguano in senso letterale, invece che solo traslato, metaforico. Potrebbero anche essere presi come i personaggi non dico più altruisti, ma per quelli più interessati al prossimo, almeno ad un aspetto del prossimo che incontrano (sangue – ma anche sesso piuttosto acceso). Mentre i non vampiri, i cosiddetti ‘normali’, si ignorano l’un l’altro con accanimento e disinteresse.
Altrettanto interessante mi pare la scelta di copertina: la cornice con un luminoso azzurro cielo screziato di nuvole che racchiude un grande rettangolo nero, vuoto come il vuoto che si porta dentro (ma anche sopra e intorno e sotto) la gente che abita queste pagine.
Il problema è che anche “Twitter” Easton Ellis finisce con l’essere vacuo come i suoi personaggi: come se cercasse di donare blasone a una rivista di gossip. Dopo Meno di zero e American Psycho sembra incapace di ripetersi. E questa raccolta-romanzo lo conferma: perché, pur se a tratti buona, ad altri insopportabile, risale ai tempi precedenti all’esordio, sono scritti di gioventù.
Il film dimostra che la raccolta di racconti è in realtà un vero romanzo. Impiega “Twitter” Easton Ellis alla sceneggiatura, che prende diverse storie, ne tralascia solo alcune, le incrocia e incastra dando alla trama una linea narrativa meno frammentata - accentua la diffusione del malattia che in quel periodo esplodeva e ancora non aveva nome, e soprattutto non aveva rimedio, l’AIDS – lascia fuori, ahimé, proprio i vampiri, che, ripeto, sono di gran lunga la trovata migliore del lotto – impiega volti celebri per i personaggi adulti (Kim Basinger, Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Chris Isaak) e pessime scelte invece per quelli giovani, che sono la maggior parte, Amber Heard a parte (se Amber Heard può non essere considerata una pessima scelta). Ma nonostante tutto lo sforzo non riesce a innalzarsi oltre il libro, che certo di suo non vola mica alto.
PS Il titolo originale è The Informers che a giudicare dal film è il nome di una band musicale, quella che forse la traduzione italiana trasforma in English Prices, ma potrei sbagliarmi: di certo c’è che leggendo il libro in traduzione il senso del titolo in originale si perde completamente. Non che sia basilare. Comunque, Acqua da mare è il titolo di uno dei tredici racconti.
”The Informers – Vite oltre il limite” di Gregor Jordan, 2008.
Romanzo in tredici racconti ambientato nella prima metà degli anni Ottanta che per “Twitter” Easton Ellis sono inizio e fine di tutto, inferno ed estasi, fonte d’ogni male e perversione.
Non riesce a staccarsene, è rimasto inchiodato a quel periodo.
Chi spicca in un racconto diventa marginale nel successivo, a volte l’io narrante, (c’è sempre, ogni racconto è scritto in prima persona singolare) è un lui e a volte è una lei, non sembra far differenza, la voce rimane uguale, i personaggi sono più o meno gli stessi che entrano ed escono dai diversi racconti, e la sensazione è quella dello stesso quadro, di un romanzo frammentato in capitoli.
Alcuni personaggi ritornano perfino in altre opere scritte dopo da “Twitter” Easton Ellis, come se fossero particolarmente illuminati e meritevoli del suo affetto e interesse.
Il sesso è diffuso, non è particolarmente appassionato, spesso bisex, a volte a tre, ha l’aria più di uno sport che di un desiderio, più di una cosa che si deve fare per status symbol che di attrazione.
Altri aspetti diffusi sono le droghe, d’ogni tipo, da quelle che si schizzano in vena a quelle altre che si aspirano passando per quelle che si ingoiano, vuoi comprate in farmacia o procurate dal pusher.
Il tutto è sempre innaffiato da generose dosi alcoliche, d’ogni tipo, miscelate shakerate, agitate, spruzzate, rigorosamente molto fredde, possibilmente dolci e frizzanti.
E un po’ perché si tratta di quell’epoca, un po’ perché si tratta di “Twitter” Easton Ellis, anche questo è un romanzo di deformazione: all’inizio appaiono tutti belli, ricchi, sani, disinvolti, la perfetta (simulazione) della felicità – man mano diventano sempre più infelici, malati, distrutti, smarriti, soli e disgregati.
In realtà sono ricchi, viziati, gran frequentatori di pusher e farmacisti, si svegliano all’una, mangiano pizza al caviale o ordinano cibi costosi che lasciano sul piatto, passano il pomeriggio a bordo piscina, girano con decapottabili inglesi o tedesche o di Maranello, bevono fino a stordirsi, o stordire qualcun altro, si preoccupano essenzialmente del proprio ombelico e dintorni, di rado lo sguardo si solleva da quella zona, passano da una festa a un party a un concerto a un cocktail a una discoteca, e via di questo passo, con un numero di sigarette fumate accese e spente che paragonate al rigore antifumo attuale fa davvero stridore.
I genitori sono per lo più antipatici ai figli, e i figli sono per la maggior parte irrilevanti per i genitori.
Provano zero empatia e ne suscitano altrettanta. Anzi, less than zero, proprio come l’esordio letterario di “Twitter” Easton Ellis.
Tutti e tutto sono raccontati e descritti immergendo la tastiera nel gelo.
I dialoghi vanno avanti dall’inizio alla fine all’inizio che segue intervallati da descrizioni che sembrano banali e senza importanza (ma banale e senza importanza è la vita di queste persone) che sono il regno del presente indicativo: vado, esco, torno, mangio, mi alzo… anche quando sta raccontando un episodio del passato (flashback?), “Twitter” Easton Ellis usa il presente.
Il ritmo latita, o meglio, sono le variazioni di ritmo a latitare: perché invece un incessante martellamento tra l’ossessivo e il ripetitivo (monotono) si può avvertire pur cercando di evitarlo.
E finalmente, ben oltre la metà del libro, appare il vampiro sbandierato nella bandella. Anzi, vampiri. Ed è il momento clou, il migliore anche per me. La metafora è trasparente. E i vampiri, che assomigliano in tutto e per tutto al resto dell’umanità qui dipinta, se non altro sono più ‘sinceri’, più trasparenti: dissanguano in senso letterale, invece che solo traslato, metaforico. Potrebbero anche essere presi come i personaggi non dico più altruisti, ma per quelli più interessati al prossimo, almeno ad un aspetto del prossimo che incontrano (sangue – ma anche sesso piuttosto acceso). Mentre i non vampiri, i cosiddetti ‘normali’, si ignorano l’un l’altro con accanimento e disinteresse.
Altrettanto interessante mi pare la scelta di copertina: la cornice con un luminoso azzurro cielo screziato di nuvole che racchiude un grande rettangolo nero, vuoto come il vuoto che si porta dentro (ma anche sopra e intorno e sotto) la gente che abita queste pagine.
Il problema è che anche “Twitter” Easton Ellis finisce con l’essere vacuo come i suoi personaggi: come se cercasse di donare blasone a una rivista di gossip. Dopo Meno di zero e American Psycho sembra incapace di ripetersi. E questa raccolta-romanzo lo conferma: perché, pur se a tratti buona, ad altri insopportabile, risale ai tempi precedenti all’esordio, sono scritti di gioventù.
Il film dimostra che la raccolta di racconti è in realtà un vero romanzo. Impiega “Twitter” Easton Ellis alla sceneggiatura, che prende diverse storie, ne tralascia solo alcune, le incrocia e incastra dando alla trama una linea narrativa meno frammentata - accentua la diffusione del malattia che in quel periodo esplodeva e ancora non aveva nome, e soprattutto non aveva rimedio, l’AIDS – lascia fuori, ahimé, proprio i vampiri, che, ripeto, sono di gran lunga la trovata migliore del lotto – impiega volti celebri per i personaggi adulti (Kim Basinger, Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Chris Isaak) e pessime scelte invece per quelli giovani, che sono la maggior parte, Amber Heard a parte (se Amber Heard può non essere considerata una pessima scelta). Ma nonostante tutto lo sforzo non riesce a innalzarsi oltre il libro, che certo di suo non vola mica alto.
PS Il titolo originale è The Informers che a giudicare dal film è il nome di una band musicale, quella che forse la traduzione italiana trasforma in English Prices, ma potrei sbagliarmi: di certo c’è che leggendo il libro in traduzione il senso del titolo in originale si perde completamente. Non che sia basilare. Comunque, Acqua da mare è il titolo di uno dei tredici racconti.
February 7, 2021
This isn't a novel. It's a looooooooooosely connected collection of short stories. More recent editions of The Informers now acknowledge this. When I first read the book in 1994, not knowing this fact threw me off completely. So, now I'm re-reading it because I hear it's being turned into a movie. It will be interesting to see what comes of that.
Certainly The Informers is not Ellis's best work and not a place to start if you're new to his writing. A chronological reading of his work is my suggestion or, if you only want to read one of his novels, I would recommend my favorite The Rules Of Attraction.
After re-reading The Informers knowing it's short stories, the connection between each is more apparent with the most common link being tumbleweeds against the backdrop of L.A. Its episodic nature makes it play out like Pulp Fiction on Nembutal, pot and high end alcohol. It even veers into horror territory with a story about uber-hip Wayfarer wearing vampires.
I also came to the conclusion that I love Bret Easton Ellis' style but not necessary his substance. He's an excellent writer but not necessarily a good story teller.
Certainly The Informers is not Ellis's best work and not a place to start if you're new to his writing. A chronological reading of his work is my suggestion or, if you only want to read one of his novels, I would recommend my favorite The Rules Of Attraction.
After re-reading The Informers knowing it's short stories, the connection between each is more apparent with the most common link being tumbleweeds against the backdrop of L.A. Its episodic nature makes it play out like Pulp Fiction on Nembutal, pot and high end alcohol. It even veers into horror territory with a story about uber-hip Wayfarer wearing vampires.
I also came to the conclusion that I love Bret Easton Ellis' style but not necessary his substance. He's an excellent writer but not necessarily a good story teller.
February 25, 2013
Ah Bret, I loved you so, so long ago. For anyone who has not had the mixture of pleasure, horror, disgust and loathing which is generated by the reading of American Psycho, then you should probably start here to ease your way into the dismissive, violent and destructive world which Ellis describes. I read American Psycho in one long teenage school day (under desks during class/ behind a wall at break/ on the bus home) and was amazed that this man was actually a fully functioning author and not a psychopathic murderer who, I would happily have believed, penned his most famous of novels from the constraints of a padded room by narrating his tale into a dictophone after he was deemed too dangerous to be given a pen.
To compare The Informers to American Psycho is like comparing a watered down lemon cordial to a shot of rocket fuel. The comparison is largely meaningless because American Psycho is so far off the scale of brilliant wrongness that there is no scale capable of measuring it accurately. The brutality, drug taking, narcisism and general self-absorbed-bastarditis exhibited in The Informers is not in the same category but it is still present and grubby. You won't like any of the people who inhabit these pages but that's ok ... maybe they are there to be despised so we can all feel better about ourselves.
Thanks Bret, I feel like a paragon of crystalline virtue now.
To compare The Informers to American Psycho is like comparing a watered down lemon cordial to a shot of rocket fuel. The comparison is largely meaningless because American Psycho is so far off the scale of brilliant wrongness that there is no scale capable of measuring it accurately. The brutality, drug taking, narcisism and general self-absorbed-bastarditis exhibited in The Informers is not in the same category but it is still present and grubby. You won't like any of the people who inhabit these pages but that's ok ... maybe they are there to be despised so we can all feel better about ourselves.
Thanks Bret, I feel like a paragon of crystalline virtue now.
October 29, 2020
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
If you are familiar with Brett Easton Ellis, you are already aware that he is the one who gave us the opulence and overindulgences of youth like what can be found in . . . .
But what if he mixed that sort of tale with a little bit of . . . . .
Ummmmmmmm . . . .
It’s the end of summer, 1982. Days are spent poolside in a hazy state of inebriation while movies play on the Betamax and the earworm of “Our Love’s In Jeopardy” burrows in deeper as the cassette reel turns. Everyone’s f*&^ing everyone and people are dropping like flies. But is it normal for your blood to end up all over the ceiling when you “OD”???? Or for everyone to think you’re hanging in Vegas, but then your arms get discovered on La Brea? Even the future president ends up on the cover of GQ with what looks like puncture wounds on his neck . . . . .
Okay, so a word of caution to anyone who thinks this sounds like a good time: (1) it takes over 50% of the book before the vampires appear; (2) the delivery is a short story cycle so although loosely connected, there is not a real cohesive flow; (3) it’s B.E.E. so it’s super graphic and pulls zero punches when it comes to descriptions of sex and gore. I don’t blame you if you want to steer clear, but for Mitchell this a . . . .
If you are familiar with Brett Easton Ellis, you are already aware that he is the one who gave us the opulence and overindulgences of youth like what can be found in . . . .
But what if he mixed that sort of tale with a little bit of . . . . .
Ummmmmmmm . . . .
It’s the end of summer, 1982. Days are spent poolside in a hazy state of inebriation while movies play on the Betamax and the earworm of “Our Love’s In Jeopardy” burrows in deeper as the cassette reel turns. Everyone’s f*&^ing everyone and people are dropping like flies. But is it normal for your blood to end up all over the ceiling when you “OD”???? Or for everyone to think you’re hanging in Vegas, but then your arms get discovered on La Brea? Even the future president ends up on the cover of GQ with what looks like puncture wounds on his neck . . . . .
Okay, so a word of caution to anyone who thinks this sounds like a good time: (1) it takes over 50% of the book before the vampires appear; (2) the delivery is a short story cycle so although loosely connected, there is not a real cohesive flow; (3) it’s B.E.E. so it’s super graphic and pulls zero punches when it comes to descriptions of sex and gore. I don’t blame you if you want to steer clear, but for Mitchell this a . . . .
May 21, 2008
the way these short stories intertwine with one another is purely brilliant. i know a lot of people tend to not enjoy ellis' style of writing, but i think that the joy in his writing is all within the way everything is so disconnected and connected, all at the same time.
no other author can write end on end about seemingly useless facts, and still have use for them.
i know this sounds extremely contradicting, but he does the same thing throughout his other writings.
american psycho is a good example. 300+ pages on a character you only know about through his actions. his disconnected actions.
less than zero and rules of attraction do the same thing.
his style is focused on disconnection.
now, the art of that, is to write in a disconnected state, but still be connected to your readers.
ellis does that. he does it well.
no other author can write end on end about seemingly useless facts, and still have use for them.
i know this sounds extremely contradicting, but he does the same thing throughout his other writings.
american psycho is a good example. 300+ pages on a character you only know about through his actions. his disconnected actions.
less than zero and rules of attraction do the same thing.
his style is focused on disconnection.
now, the art of that, is to write in a disconnected state, but still be connected to your readers.
ellis does that. he does it well.
July 24, 2009
Sure, it looks entertaining. But, I promise you, by the time you get to the thirtieth page you'll start flipping through the pages, just to see if the 'might as well kill ourselves now' tone dies down a little as the book goes on. Surprise! It doesn't. An endless, painful, LONG look at the lives of some very spoiled, very addicted teenagers and their over medicated, surgically altered parents. It's LA at it's worst: and I'm having trouble believing that people this heartless even exist, but that's just my naiive sensitivity kicking in. There's only so many 'lets smoke a joint and shoot up and have meaningless, stoned sex' scenes a person can take and throughout the book your bombarded with them, page after page. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have gotten from this experience. We live in a materialistic age, drug use is a serious problem, today's teens have no substance - what exactly is the message here? Go ahead, read it, and see if you can find any sort of meaning behind all of this because I sure as hell can't.
October 26, 2012
Style over substance perhaps, but there's so much style that there's still a lot of substance for those paying attention.
This one was a re-read. I only have 700 books I haven't opened yet but I just had to come back to this one. NaNoWriMo is coming up and I've had an idea running around my mind for years that could use a structure similar to this one. So I combined research with pleasure and got stuck in to the Ellis novel that I remembered most fondly from a decade ago. Amazingly it was even better than I remembered but the structure had less of an effect on me that it once did. I guess you could say I have grown as a person and evolved as a reader. At least I would hope I have!
The SF Chronicle called it a post-modern Winesburg, Ohio which for those of you in the same unknowledgable boat as me, means a novel told in short story form. Each chapter is from a different first person point of view and involves one or more characters from other chapters. There is no real plot to synopsisise for you, each chapter is just another look at the day to day existence of the morally bankrupt spoilt brats of Hell.A. in the 1980s.
Horrific things happen but these are not plot points; in another novel the death of a character, a drug deal, the breakup of a relationship might be major events but these barely penetrate the drug-induced haze of apathy Ellis is taking you on a guided tour through with The Informers.
When I was a younger man I identified with these people, all of them disconnected from the human race in almost the same way. All of them selfish and unfeeling, yet finding comfort and safety in their disconnected nature. Now I can sympathise and understand but they certainly come across as more annoying than anything else, much like all of the characters Ellis uses in his novels.
I found a lot of similarities between this and my favourite Haruki Murakami novel, Dance, Dance, Dance, obviously the same mid 80s setting but also the characters share the same disconnectedness with a booming economy and the social changes that brings. Where Murakami uses Talking Heads, Ellis has The Go-Go's. I've never heard of The Go-Go's but having just listened to their debut album Beauty and the Beat it works as the perfect soundtrack to this novel, punk rockers gone commercial for financial success providing a bubble gum background to the story of a group of soulless people empty and waiting to be filled up with the latest fad. For me however it was always the debut album from Jack's Mannequin, Everything in Transit that made me think of the lost people wandering around L.A. in the work of Bret Easton Ellis.
A side note on the artwork for this particular edition, perfect. High Design, NYC have captured the content of the book quite superbly with the simple, clean black & white image of a sun drenched pool.
I guess I should get on with using some reviewer speak, some choice hyperbole, dig up some fantastic phrase that is essentially meaningless but drives excitement in the reader. If ever any book was primed for that kind of empty praise it would be this one after all. It's a very funny book, populated with believable characters that spout incredible dialogue, weaving some kind of impressionist tapestry - a little messy up close but when assessed as a whole it's quite wonderful - of social decline. I think it's still my favourite Ellis too.
This one was a re-read. I only have 700 books I haven't opened yet but I just had to come back to this one. NaNoWriMo is coming up and I've had an idea running around my mind for years that could use a structure similar to this one. So I combined research with pleasure and got stuck in to the Ellis novel that I remembered most fondly from a decade ago. Amazingly it was even better than I remembered but the structure had less of an effect on me that it once did. I guess you could say I have grown as a person and evolved as a reader. At least I would hope I have!
The SF Chronicle called it a post-modern Winesburg, Ohio which for those of you in the same unknowledgable boat as me, means a novel told in short story form. Each chapter is from a different first person point of view and involves one or more characters from other chapters. There is no real plot to synopsisise for you, each chapter is just another look at the day to day existence of the morally bankrupt spoilt brats of Hell.A. in the 1980s.
Horrific things happen but these are not plot points; in another novel the death of a character, a drug deal, the breakup of a relationship might be major events but these barely penetrate the drug-induced haze of apathy Ellis is taking you on a guided tour through with The Informers.
When I was a younger man I identified with these people, all of them disconnected from the human race in almost the same way. All of them selfish and unfeeling, yet finding comfort and safety in their disconnected nature. Now I can sympathise and understand but they certainly come across as more annoying than anything else, much like all of the characters Ellis uses in his novels.
I found a lot of similarities between this and my favourite Haruki Murakami novel, Dance, Dance, Dance, obviously the same mid 80s setting but also the characters share the same disconnectedness with a booming economy and the social changes that brings. Where Murakami uses Talking Heads, Ellis has The Go-Go's. I've never heard of The Go-Go's but having just listened to their debut album Beauty and the Beat it works as the perfect soundtrack to this novel, punk rockers gone commercial for financial success providing a bubble gum background to the story of a group of soulless people empty and waiting to be filled up with the latest fad. For me however it was always the debut album from Jack's Mannequin, Everything in Transit that made me think of the lost people wandering around L.A. in the work of Bret Easton Ellis.
A side note on the artwork for this particular edition, perfect. High Design, NYC have captured the content of the book quite superbly with the simple, clean black & white image of a sun drenched pool.
I guess I should get on with using some reviewer speak, some choice hyperbole, dig up some fantastic phrase that is essentially meaningless but drives excitement in the reader. If ever any book was primed for that kind of empty praise it would be this one after all. It's a very funny book, populated with believable characters that spout incredible dialogue, weaving some kind of impressionist tapestry - a little messy up close but when assessed as a whole it's quite wonderful - of social decline. I think it's still my favourite Ellis too.
April 25, 2023
The Informers is light when compared to the likes of American Psycho, and despite a return to the empty soullessness seen in his debut Less Than Zero, this is void of any real shocks of a graphic nature. This collection of short fiction loosely held together by one or two characters who flit in and out of a few, includes narratives from jaded rock-stars, vampires, drug abusers, and characters in the mould of 'Clay' from Less Than Zero - empty and depressed materialistic youngsters. It is sometimes hard to follow and link connections between the many characters, but there are links so its less stand alone stories that have nothing to do with each other. At times superfluous and lazy but also flashes of the really good writer I know he is. Death stalks these pages, and it can get depressing, so there is very little in the way of warmth here. That's not to say it's a bad book though. No one does sour like Ellis does sour, if you like that kind of thing. The movie is worth watching too.
June 6, 2009
Joe woke up and ordered a cheese omelet only to stare at it the entire time, confused about why he ordered it in the first place when he wasn't hungry, then he went to the movies but he didn't really pay attention to the first half of it, then this goth girl was looking at him funny and he really wanted to fuck her but doesn't, and he decided to visit a friend's house and so he drove there in his super expensive sports car and drank beer and afterward he went to a club and picked up a valley girl with whom he snorted coke with and then had sex with, and in the morning he woke up with a big hangover and so he drank some juice.
Wasn't that a really annoying run-on sentence? Unfortunately this book is chock-full of them. I kept hoping that the minutia of the characters' lives will somehow lead to or add up to a scathing commentary about society or the way some people live, but sadly, it does not. Ultimately, I felt like I was just following the Twitter accounts of several rich Southern Californians leading lives of debauchery. What a big disappointment.
Wasn't that a really annoying run-on sentence? Unfortunately this book is chock-full of them. I kept hoping that the minutia of the characters' lives will somehow lead to or add up to a scathing commentary about society or the way some people live, but sadly, it does not. Ultimately, I felt like I was just following the Twitter accounts of several rich Southern Californians leading lives of debauchery. What a big disappointment.
January 13, 2018
Bret Easton Ellis is of my biggest influences as an author and while this book isn’t quite on a level with the exceptional American Psycho, which is probably his masterpiece, it is still excellent and well worth reading.
The way Bret Easton Ellis captures the mindset of a certain element of society in the 1980s and pushes it to it’s logical conclusion is very much something I was trying to emulate in Drug Gang, with my chosen time period being the early 2000s.
This collection of stories set in Los Angeles in the 1980s offers plenty of food for thought, particularly when it comes to philosophy and morality.
“Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.”
The way Bret Easton Ellis captures the mindset of a certain element of society in the 1980s and pushes it to it’s logical conclusion is very much something I was trying to emulate in Drug Gang, with my chosen time period being the early 2000s.
This collection of stories set in Los Angeles in the 1980s offers plenty of food for thought, particularly when it comes to philosophy and morality.
“Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.”
Read
February 17, 2024REREAD—thots on YT!
August 17, 2021
A Pokol, Breat Easton Ellis univerzumában: Los Angeles. Valiumtól kába bukott angyalok korzóznak a pálmafák alatt, üres szemű, napbarnított szőkéket invitálnak egy italra, a hőségben remeg a levegő, a Porsche motorja agresszíven beböffen, és mindenki előre unja már az egészet, a beszélgetést, ami a dugás előtt van, a dugás utáni csendet, sőt, a dugást magát. Itt a szenvedés rafinált: kapsz végtelen sok pénzt, csak azon kapod magad, hogy nem tudsz mit kezdeni vele. Olyan ez, mint valami késő XX. századi Tantalusz-parafrázis, ahol eszközeid vannak egy jobb életre, csak kedved nincs, hogy élj velük.
(Megjegyzem, akkor szembesültem azzal, hogy Ellis micsoda pazar író, amikor olvasás közben elfelejtettem, hogy ez a szöveg voltaképpen irodalom, amit "csak" egy író írt. El tudja hitetni, hogy ezt a mérgező, szörnyű világot nem teremtette, hanem csak közvetíti. Kellemetlen, néha fájdalmas olvasni, minden porcikám tiltakozik, hogy akár csak közelítőleg valóságnak fogadjam el ezt a teret, de tekintve, hogy ez a vélelmezhető írói célnak tökéletesen megfelel, csak ámulni tudok Ellis képességein.)
March 24, 2022
While revisiting Ellis’s debatable "best work", American Psycho, I found myself slightly disappointed.
On first reading it, I was in a particularly bitter frame of mind where the violence and decadence appealed to me. Reading it again years later, I guess I wasn’t so angry with life, and so I found less enjoyment with Bateman’s horrific lifestyle. I still gave it four stars and will always respect the novel - (sick and disturbing as it is) - but I was also less forgiving of the constant (though satirical) details in consumerism, fashion, food tastes and body products. At the other end, I found myself less sickly amused, more just sickened, by the insanely cruel torture scenes.
I was one of those annoying assholes who smugly say to those who liked the film: “You think that's messed up? You haven't read the book!” To which I’d then compare the film as being like a fairy-tale picnic. I think I read that comparison somewhere and for some reason I thought it sounded cool. Well, anyway, these days I actually prefer the film over the novel. It highlights the satirical aspects - (something Ellis flawlessly incorporates into all his work) - whilst redressing the more horrific acts of cruelty (no hungry rats or children getting stabbed) with a cartoonish outrageousness that makes it easier to find the film amusing despite the darker moments (I still find the scene where he insults the hobo, before killing him and his dog, painful to watch).
And now, revisiting Ellis's less appreciated Informers, the very opposite has happened. I found myself loving this book even more than I did the first time. I can honestly see why some people - (fans and general readers alike) - don't like it. One negative Goodreads reviewer stated they skimmed the first fifty pages, checking if its “might as well kill yourself now tone” was going to stay. Unfortunately for them, it did. This book is one of the most minimalist, cold and soulless books I have read. At least, that’s how it appears on the surface.
Much like the minimalist approach Hemingway adopts in his excellent debut The Sun Also Rises, Ellis guts his prose to a hazy, zonked-out sketch of pointless words that seem uninterested in sitting next to each other. Much like his zombie-like characters, there is no pretence of beauty in Ellis’s writing - its form or its content.
As a self-claimed moralist, he is obsessed with the immoral aspects of humanity. Yes, he delves into death and murder and rape and torture, but he also pries further than that. The Informers is significantly less violent than American Psycho, but, like the latter, it plunges deeply into something more apparent in his and our society. That is: the eventual death of the human soul ... through materialism, consumerism, technology, and our growing lack of interest in anything that isn’t tangibly attainable and able to be labelled. But Ellis lends such a unique flavour to this by taking a surprisingly neutral stand on the subject. Instead of beating us over the head with the need to nurture our truer selves, nor conforming to the desperate conventions of "look-how-edgy-I-am" avant garde, Ellis takes a more subtle approach in simply portraying the results of such a base mentality.
Almost every single person is described as “attractive,” “tan,” “fit" and “healthy”. But ironically, they all seem dead, totally devoid of spirit or compassion. None of these characters seem even remotely happy with their lives. They’re just too tired and stoned to bother noticing. This justifies the zoned-out voice with which Ellis presents these multiple, loosely-connected but ostensibly similar people and their stories.
Furthermore, if you look a little deeper, most of these characters do convey an elusive though unmistakable inner sadness. There are several parts when, feeling perpetually lost and meaningless, they lose control of their emotions and break down. The stoned-out mother fears her son, hates her husband, ignores her dying mother, sleeps through the day on valium, dreams of drowning rats in the swimming pool … and she can’t face looking at herself in the mirror. One young man gets all the girls he wants, drives a Mercedes, earns a more-than-comfortable living … he sobs like a child when his friends don’t let him grieve a lost friend that hated him anyway.
That’s where this book actually shines in my opinion. Amidst these shallow, amoral shells, there is an occasional glimpse of humanity trying to break through. Some particular moments I really liked - ones where Ellis does infuse the slightest gasp of spirit, of actual humanity - are such as the early story, In The Islands, when a young Tim Price reluctantly joins his father in Hawaii. There’s a strange and quietly mocing scene at the end, after Tim is humiliated by his father and a girl. He storms off to his room. His father tries to apologise but Tim ignores him, driving in the final nail of their friendship. His dad walks out tearfully, sits by a bench, watches manta-ray playing in the surf. Tim’s attractive girlfriend finds the father and they have a vague but somewhat touching conversation. It’s weird and it doesn’t go anywhere. But amidst the uglier surroundings of the LA portions of the book, it feels serene and picturesque. That the father, although crude and clueless, still harbours good intentions and wants to connect with his son, and that the girl recognises this and comforts him after failing … well, let’s just say few other characters do anything like that throughout the rest of the book.
There are thirteen separate stories. Some of them are better than others, but all are at least interesting. There’s even some bizarrely colourful moments, such as a story about vampires and one particularly good section in Tokyo, where rock-star Bryan Metro abuses the maids, almost beats a groupie to death and tries to rekindle with an old friend from his former band.
My favourite story, however, and probably one of the best things Elli has written, is Letters From L.A.. I won’t give away the story, but the premise is a sweet and innocent Camden girl takes a break from her studies, staying with grandparents on the West Coast. She writes letters to her friend Sean - (Patrick Bateman’s brother) - which, although never answered, are continuously sent regardless, and indirectly reveal her mental transformation into another superficial L.A. clone. It’s actually very melancholic.
Overall, I’ve heard people say that, at best, The Informers is like Less Than Zero’s b-side. And while both books are very similar, I honestly think that, with the addition of many different people as opposed to just one unlikable an boring teenager, The Informers easily takes the edge over Ellis’s famous and reputable first novel. I can’t speak for anyone else, but as a fan of Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers earns a high place on my virtual shelf of “personal favourites”. What makes it even cooler, and inevitable that I will read it probably multiple times, is that as I read more of his novels, I will feel inclined to return to this medley that plays around with all the characters within his creative universe. Many people might be bored or offended or sceptical of Ellis’s writing, but I personally love his work and would recommend this book as the best place to start if you were thinking of giving him a try.
Even though it did work for me, I would discourage those interested in him from starting with American Psycho. For several reasons. Anyway, this was a great book and I do not regret revisiting it at all. Oh, and I might as well mention it. I actually think the film was very underrated too. Check it out if you enjoyed the book. It's directed by an Australian guy whose career never really took off - this film may have been the killer - even though he also made a good movie about Ned Kelly.
August 22, 2020
I'm not sure this was an actual novel, it's more like a bunch of short stories with a lot of plot and character overlap, which is weird in a way, because I was expecting short stories straight but then there's this inward spiraling that only exacerbates the fact that it's often hard to tell who's who exactly, though through no fault of the reader, it's mostly the characters who are too disoriented to have clear ideas of who they are. Anyway, we know it's not East Coast but L.A. and environs, and there's a seemingly homogenous tribe of uniformly bored and dull yuppies who are all about 20 and look a few years less, lounging around 1980s on a variety of abused prescription meds and coke and whatever, and they smoke a lot of pot, visit each other's poolsides and parties and photo shoots and other exclusive social events, and deal drugs and suck cock for drugs and tape videos compulsively and generally act like nihilistic brats with expensive habits and absurdly shallow relationships.
It's all really hilarious actually: these are like the most gruesome parody of privileged white (blond, buff, rich, racist etc) kids entirely disfunctional, drugged out of their minds and generally clueless. That is, it would be hilarious, with all the disinterested luxury and excess, if it wasn't for all the sadistic passive agression or downright slasher violence nonchalantly juxtaposed in carefully measured doses, from coffee spoon to swimming pool. The compartmentalization of characters and narratives gives scope to a nuanced spectrum of mindstates, from deranged braindeath to almost relatable, from self-victimizing to horroristic monstrosity. The Informers reads like a kind of satirical freakshow, a modern-day hypebolic rag of courtly scandals and high (huhhuh) society misdemeanors, sometimes outlandish beyond incredulity, but generally too peppered with delicious details to rule out as possibly a thing. Vicarious, brutal, high-budget, cliché'd and quirky, riddled with black humor to the extreme: I found myself embarrasingly entertained.
It's all really hilarious actually: these are like the most gruesome parody of privileged white (blond, buff, rich, racist etc) kids entirely disfunctional, drugged out of their minds and generally clueless. That is, it would be hilarious, with all the disinterested luxury and excess, if it wasn't for all the sadistic passive agression or downright slasher violence nonchalantly juxtaposed in carefully measured doses, from coffee spoon to swimming pool. The compartmentalization of characters and narratives gives scope to a nuanced spectrum of mindstates, from deranged braindeath to almost relatable, from self-victimizing to horroristic monstrosity. The Informers reads like a kind of satirical freakshow, a modern-day hypebolic rag of courtly scandals and high (huhhuh) society misdemeanors, sometimes outlandish beyond incredulity, but generally too peppered with delicious details to rule out as possibly a thing. Vicarious, brutal, high-budget, cliché'd and quirky, riddled with black humor to the extreme: I found myself embarrasingly entertained.
November 9, 2025
Și cu asta am încheiat saga literară a lui BEE, începută acum fix 40 de ani (mie mi-au luat cam 17 să trec prin toate cărțile lui).
„The Informers” e un volum de proză scurtă asamblat din resturi de la alte cărți și chestii scrise prin facultate pe care le-a trimis editorului său în intervalul dintre momentul „American Psycho” și „Glamorama” (i-au trebuit 8 ani să termine „Glamorama” și era obligat să publice ceva o dată la câțiva ani).
Proza, persoanjele, poveștile, dar mai ales atmosfera sunt pure BEE & '80s nostalgia, și după cum am scris în alte review-uri la alte cărți de-ale autorului, nimeni nu conjură vibe-ul ăla decandent al anilor 80 al celor tineri, frumoși, bogați și detașați emoțional precum o face BEE.
Dialogurile sunt foarte repetitive (există pagini întregi de dialoguri formate din 2 sau 3 replici identice, recirculate cu diferite forme de punctuație, dar esențialmente identice), și la final rămâi cu acel gol familiar în suflet că oamenii despre care ai citit sunt doar umbre ale unor ființe, n-au cum să fie adevărați (deși probabil sunt).
All in all, not terrible, but also far from great.
„The Informers” e un volum de proză scurtă asamblat din resturi de la alte cărți și chestii scrise prin facultate pe care le-a trimis editorului său în intervalul dintre momentul „American Psycho” și „Glamorama” (i-au trebuit 8 ani să termine „Glamorama” și era obligat să publice ceva o dată la câțiva ani).
Proza, persoanjele, poveștile, dar mai ales atmosfera sunt pure BEE & '80s nostalgia, și după cum am scris în alte review-uri la alte cărți de-ale autorului, nimeni nu conjură vibe-ul ăla decandent al anilor 80 al celor tineri, frumoși, bogați și detașați emoțional precum o face BEE.
Dialogurile sunt foarte repetitive (există pagini întregi de dialoguri formate din 2 sau 3 replici identice, recirculate cu diferite forme de punctuație, dar esențialmente identice), și la final rămâi cu acel gol familiar în suflet că oamenii despre care ai citit sunt doar umbre ale unor ființe, n-au cum să fie adevărați (deși probabil sunt).
All in all, not terrible, but also far from great.
March 25, 2019
California is sunny and beautiful but Ellis digs up the emptiness and evil that lies beneath the glamorous surface. Love these short stories. Sad, disturbing, and darkly humorous. If it wasn't for touches of dark humor, Ellis' books would be too empty to handle.
December 1, 2008
I love B.E.E. because of his unerring talent for creating the best kind of repulsed fascination. (Or fascinating revulsion.) Also, he has the best moments. This one occurs early on in the collection, and was probably the place that hooked me:
"The door opens. It's a small bathroom and Raymond is siting on the toilet, the lid closed, beginning to cry again, his face and eyes red and wet. I am so surprised by Raymond's emotion that I lean against the door and just stare, watching him bunch his hands into fists.
'He was my friend,' he says between intakes of breath, not looking up at me.
I'm looking at a yellowed tile on the wall for a long time, wondering how the waiter, who I am positive I had asked not to put garbanzo beans in my salad, actually had. Where was the waiter born, why had he come to Mario's hadn't he looked at the salad, didn't he understand?
'He liked you . . . too,' I say finally."
"The door opens. It's a small bathroom and Raymond is siting on the toilet, the lid closed, beginning to cry again, his face and eyes red and wet. I am so surprised by Raymond's emotion that I lean against the door and just stare, watching him bunch his hands into fists.
'He was my friend,' he says between intakes of breath, not looking up at me.
I'm looking at a yellowed tile on the wall for a long time, wondering how the waiter, who I am positive I had asked not to put garbanzo beans in my salad, actually had. Where was the waiter born, why had he come to Mario's hadn't he looked at the salad, didn't he understand?
'He liked you . . . too,' I say finally."
December 10, 2023
Money. Cocaine. Designer labeled clothes. Expensive cars. Meaningless sex with various partners. Things that belong to the world of elite of which many have written, but none writes of shallow characters inhabiting it the way Bret Easton Ellis does. At least the one of LA elite.
Coming off the American Psycho fame, Ellis went with something a bit different from his previous works, short story collection set in the same shared universe of all of his novels. World of Clay, Patrick Bateman, Paul, Sean and Lauren. His trademark first person narrative filled with nihilism is there, used to confuse reader as it takes you time to understand which character is which. Characters are crossing from story to story, in one they're the narrator, in the other they're someone mentioned in the conversation. Even though it's not highlighted, there is a time gap between, even geographic. Yet, that is Ellis' trademark, the way it was written, it might be all the same character as it just shows how all characters of his world are alike.
One of the strengths of Ellis' writing is that it all plays like a movie scene, and you can't shake the feeling you're watching '80's LA elite scene passing before your eyes. Maybe not as strong as Less Than Zero or American Psycho, which are more personal novels of his, but it certainly has its charms.
Coming off the American Psycho fame, Ellis went with something a bit different from his previous works, short story collection set in the same shared universe of all of his novels. World of Clay, Patrick Bateman, Paul, Sean and Lauren. His trademark first person narrative filled with nihilism is there, used to confuse reader as it takes you time to understand which character is which. Characters are crossing from story to story, in one they're the narrator, in the other they're someone mentioned in the conversation. Even though it's not highlighted, there is a time gap between, even geographic. Yet, that is Ellis' trademark, the way it was written, it might be all the same character as it just shows how all characters of his world are alike.
One of the strengths of Ellis' writing is that it all plays like a movie scene, and you can't shake the feeling you're watching '80's LA elite scene passing before your eyes. Maybe not as strong as Less Than Zero or American Psycho, which are more personal novels of his, but it certainly has its charms.
June 17, 2018
Definitely not a place to start with Bret Easton Ellis.
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May 24, 2026"I keep feeling that people are becoming less human and more animalistic...everyone is operating on a very primitive level. I wonder what you and I will see in our lifetimes (I told you I am becoming more philosophical lately)."
"Carlos says L.A. is swarming with vampires. I'm taking a Valium."
Those who follow my reviews may have noticed in the past couple of years an increased and arguably superficial focus on book covers. But I just can't help pointing out how great these first-run Vintage Contemporaries paperback editions of Ellis's early novels look...well, my copy of The Informers actually doesn't look great because I've had it for over 20 years and the back cover fell off as I was reading (I last read it in the fall of '04), but you get my point. Anyway, it looked great when I bought it, but I found part of the synopsis on the back cover to be kind of clumsy. Since The Informers presents as a collection of short stories, they do the thing where they briefly mention a few different characters in a few different stories and give the prospective reader a hint of the problems each will be facing. One of these characters is "Cheryl, a wannabe newscaster," [who] chides her future stepdaughter, 'You're tan, but you don't look happy.'"
Which might be the most obvious line of satire in the entire book. And if, as I think some critics and perhaps his old publisher would have it, Ellis were just a writer who made easy and fairly tame observations about society- that being tan and having excessive wealth doesn't buy happiness, for example- I probably would've grown bored with him a long time ago. But to the extent that he is a social satirist, as opposed to channeling a lot of unpleasant and vicious feelings of his own through his characters (and maybe the two are not mutually exclusive), it's in effect a much more radical satire than that line makes it seem, suggested more pointedly by the description of American Psycho on the "Other Books by Bret Easton Ellis" page that the publisher helpfully included in the back of this edition: "[Patrick] Bateman...prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront."
And something apocalyptic is happening in the background of these stories, like a nightmare AM radio station whose wavelength fades in and out throughout the book. There are shootings, car crashes on the outskirts of Vegas. People disappear, sometimes found in metal drums in the desert and sometimes never found at all. Vampires exist, and it seems most of the denizens of LA's nightlife are aware of this fact. Everyone is on Valium, including the vamps. A friend who spent a good deal of his late teens and early 20s on opiates once told me that what he sometimes really dreams of is lying in bed in a dark room with sports on TV, the volume turned low...and for better or worse, Ellis's work broadly- but The Informers perhaps especially- seems like the literary equivalent of that impulse. Part of why that black-and-white photo on the cover works so well for me is that the stories in the book also feel like they're in black-and-white, everything muted. Very little happens that I would call dramatic. Like the book itself has taken a Valium, but a Valium laced with something very nasty.
I found myself mulling over cross-medium comparisons for some reason, and Tarantino is probably the most obvious director to bring up in relation to Ellis (Gregg Araki, Larry Clark, Van Sant or Linklater would make interesting points of comparison as well, though). Both are names that I'm sure 99.9% of us recognize, but they were truly unavoidable and formative figures if you were a teenager in the mid-to-late 90s as I was, with the internet still mostly a rumor, stuck in Catholic school and desperately looking for fucked-up things to read, watch and listen to. Both The Informers and Pulp Fiction came out in '94, and on the surface there are lots of of similarities. Both works you could describe as a series of interlocking stories set in SoCal, both writers are known for extreme violence and transgression...but Ellis's style of storytelling, especially here, is nevertheless completely different than Tarantino's. Pulp Fiction is full of loud, colorful characters, riveting dialogue and dramatic, stylized set-pieces. Tarantino for all his provocation is a bit of a crowd-pleaser (and I don't mean that as a diss, I love the movie). The characters in this book, however, don't really come together in surprising or narratively-satisfying ways at all. Sure, the vampire goes to the therapist who prescribes Valium to the wife who in turn gets her hair cut by the father of the guy who...but these connections never really "pay off" in any conventional sense. And the stories themselves often build to very quiet emotional (the connotation of "psychological" might actually be more appropriate here) climaxes that if you blinked you'd miss them, very much in the Carver tradition (except there are vampires). The entire canvass is gray, hushed.
By the way, what did the vampire say to the therapist?
Ellis in '94 was coming off the controversy of '91's American Psycho, and you get the sense that he wanted to publish something that would arouse a little less opprobrium. Maybe also something that would use multiple voices- I mean, how long do you want to go on writing in the first-person as Patrick Bateman, after all? The Informers is either his fourth novel or first collection of short stories, depending on how you want to think about it. The vibe of the apocalyptic background noise is somewhat familiar from Less Than Zero, and in tone The Informers is probably most similar to that novel. In the fall of '04, I was coming off having read American Psycho, and thus Ellis's strategy also worked on me- I remembered this book (kind of hilariously) as relatively mild and inoffensive. In my defense, however, there are a few stories here, strategically (?) placed in the first half, that as I mentioned above you could almost mistake for Carver or something you'd read in the New Yorker. The first story, "Bruce Calls from Mulholland," is four pages long and nothing happens, and yet I really like it. It seems to gesture at a wide world of inter-related characters and contains perhaps the most wistful sentence of Ellis's career: "The summer was drunk and night and warm and the lake." In the second story, "At the Still Point," a group of friends get together and attempt to reminisce fondly about a guy named Jamie who died in a car crash while headed to Palm Springs. But how well did they really know him? I was still re-adjusting to Ellis's dialogue while I read this story, and one could easily find the way these guys talk to each other both vapid and repetitive; but there is also a rhythm and craft to it, and the denouement here is one of my favorites in the book:
I lift my glass, feeling stupid, and when Raymond raises his glass...I remember Jamie so suddenly and with such clarity that it doesn't seem as if the car had flown off the highway in the desert that night. It almost seems as if the asshole is right here, with us, and that if I turn around he will be sitting there, his glass raised also, smirking, shaking his head and mouthing the word "fools."
The third tale, "The Up Escalator," is one of those stories about a bored, well-off married woman having an affair (paging the New Yorker). I think it's pretty good, though. She sees an Armani-wearing therapist called Dr. Nova (interesting name) who charges the exorbitant rate of $135/hour and who will reappear later in the collection. The sentence that feels like the emotional culmination of the story-
As I fill a plastic syringe with insulin, I have to fight off the impulse to fill it with air and then plunge it into a vein and watch his face contort, his body fall to the floor.
- reminded me that so many of Ellis's stories, both here and elsewhere, seem to climax with homicidal impulses rising to the surface of a repressed person's consciousness; that nearly all of his plots (such as they are) bend towards murder, either in thought or deed. Just something I've noticed. The fourth story, "In the Islands," is about a father and son who go to Hawaii together, meet a woman, and...I am still puzzling over it a little. Maybe partly for that reason it feels like the best story in the collection. The fifth, "Sitting Still," is about a girl coming home to LA from college, and the decision she finally makes when the train pulls into the station. This one is especially subdued, almost gentle. All of these stories are in the first-person, by the way. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not sure that Ellis has ever once written in the third-person (just checked my copy of Glamorama, the novel of his I remember least- yep, that's first-person, too). Nor can I honestly say that I sensed a huge variance in the ostensibly multiple voices scattered through this book (maybe that is both his strength and his weakness as a writer- he pretty much has one voice, but it draws you in). The sixth story, "Water from the Sun," blurred and almost completely vanished from my memory as soon as I read it. But I think it is about a woman (maybe Cheryl the newscaster?) living with a guy who may or may not be gay. She may or may not want to sleep with him. I have a mental image of them in the bathroom together, him getting stoned on the toilet while she takes a bath. The seventh story, "Discovering Japan," is about a pop singer named Bryan Metro (I keep thinking of him as "Johnny Metro", for some reason) who violently abuses groupies and lives a kind of hellish blood- and semen-stained existence as a strung-out cash-cow for his handlers. Can't say I dug this one all that much, but once again Ellis hit me with an ending that lingered, a confirmation that for Bryan Metro this is not an exit:
I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon.
The eighth story, "Letters from L.A.," consists of a series of letters written by a girl named Anne to Sean Bateman, Patrick Bateman's brother and one of the main characters from The Rules of Attraction, a series of letters that readers of that novel know will never be answered because Sean's an asshole (). Of all the stories here, this was the one I found hardest to read, that touched me on an emotional level. Maybe I was thinking of my own missed chances- people who never answered me and people I never answered. Maybe I was thinking of poor James Van Der Beek, who played Sean in The Rules of Attraction movie and recently died of colorectal cancer at 47 (I am 40 now. I suddenly really don't like it when people die in their 40s). Or maybe Ellis is a sadist, and he knows how uncomfortable it can make a reader to have to just sit and read a series of earnest, unanswered letters. Both of the quotes I put up at the top of this review are from the fictional Anne's letters, and they would both make perfect epigraphs for the book, even if Ellis deliberately undercuts her a little (i.e., Anne's somewhat self-congratulatory parenthetical remark about having become more "philosophical" lately, which I'm pretty sure is supposed to underline the commonplaceness of the thought). Actually, that quote would be a perfect epigraph in part because Ellis undercuts her, because that kind of earnestness about the world and the human condition, in Ellis's writing, cannot be allowed to stand on its own. I still think it's powerful, maybe more powerful for Ellis's recognition of its quaintness. The second quote I put up there feels like something The Onion would make up in a fake review of an Ellis novel, but I assure you it is real.
From the eighth story onwards, the collection becomes a little hazier in my memory (I read this about a month ago now), and increasingly resembles the work of an artist whose vibes I think are actually much closer to Ellis's than Tarantino's are. NIN's The Downward Spiral also came out in '94, and the first half of that album of course features the danceable, hit single "Closer." Which had a great enough hook that the lyrics "I want to fuck you like an animal" were allowed to implant themselves in the consciousnesses of 9-year-olds like myself everywhere. There are, in addition, some pretty moments on the album's second song, "Piggy," and you can rock out to the fourth, "March of the Pigs." But some of the tracks on the second half of the album you might be tempted to refer to as tracks rather than songs (is "Big Man With a Gun" a song? How about "A Warm Place," or the title track?), just as I am tempted think of the back half of The Informers more as sketches than stories. The narratives are less formed and offer even less resolution here. Just as the conventional pleasures of hook-filled pop choruses are pretty much absent from The Downward Spiral after "Closer," so too are conventionally-dramatic storytelling pleasures from The Informers. And like The Downward Spiral, The Informers gets darker as it goes. One story, I think it is the ninth ("Another Gray Area"), just ends on a deserted city street at night, the literary equivalent of trailing off into abrasive machine noise. The tenth story, "The Secrets of Summer," is the main vampire story and could easily be an outtake from American Psycho, while the eleventh, "The Fifth Wheel," feels like one of the nastier middle-fingers I've encountered from an author in a while. Don't say I didn't warn you. The twelfth story, "On the Beach," makes it feel like the Valium is kicking in and the book's about to lapse into a coma. It's not a pleasant feeling, though, there's nothing warm or inviting about this sleepiness. It feels cold, like being caught shirtless on the beach just as the weather turns sharply. Like the title track on The Downward Spiral, it feels like we might never wake up from it. The final story, "At the Zoo with Bruce," depending on how you read it, might offer a little bit of the light and relief that you get on The Downward Spiral's "A Warm Place." Or maybe not. It's another head-scratcher for me.
Ellis's style absolutely cries out to be parodied, which usually suggests a lack of respect on the part of the person carrying out the parody; but I also think there is something to be said for the way certain writers influence your perception as you read them. For a brief period of time, they create a new filter through which you see the world. Some of these writers, like Ellis and DeLillo, I have complicated relationships with. And yet when you read an Ellis book, for better or worse, everything undeniably starts to feel like an Ellis book. Sitting in my car in the community college parking lot before class a few weeks ago, evening, not too many people around, ambient drone of parking lot lights. It felt like an Ellis novel. A friend of mine recently had to wean himself off of Kratom to travel internationally for a wedding. Well, that felt like an anecdote in an Ellis novel, too. Or recently, I was doing some research into Druids (long story, don't ask). Fascinating buggers. Anyway, I was telling a friend about it (he was enthralled, I swear), and in my head the conversation took on an Ellis-ian rhythm:
"So what do you know about Druids?"
"The Druids? Think I saw them open for The Pogues once."
"No, man, like...The Druids. Like, the Irish dudes? In, uh...history?"
A writer like Umberto Eco would playfully take you down the rabbit hole of Druidic and alternate history. Probably explain how Caesar made up everything he wrote about them in his Commentari de Bello Gallico (Eco would render it in Latin) and point the reader instead towards a fictional secret account that told the real story. A practiced genre writer might do some research into Druidic deities and rituals, exploit the material for suitably spooky ends. A modern "literary" novel might have a character writing a college paper or article about the Druids (those well-educated professionals are always writing something, after all), and thematically relate whatever that character learns about them to the story of the affair they're probably having. But Ellis would not care in the slightest about the actual facts about Druids. Like DeLillo (even though I think they're very different writers in other ways), he would care about the way the word "Druid" sounds, the comedic possibilities for misunderstandings and mis-associations. And everything subservient to a laconic, melancholic, and yes, intellectually incurious consciousness that Ellis renders too convincingly and too consistently throughout his career for me personally to believe it's a complete invention, a literary device and nothing more.
(Review continued in first comment.)
September 27, 2023
3,5*
Kann es einen größeren Gegensatz geben, als Gusel Jachinas „Wo vielleicht das Leben wartet“ und Bret Easton Ellis „Die Informanten“ hintereinander zu lesen? Das eine handelt von Hunger und unvorstellbarer Armut, von verwahrlosten Kindern nach Krieg und Auflösung gesellschaftlicher Strukturen, das andere handelt von unvorstellbarem Überfluss, von Übersättigung und Wohlstandverwahrlosung. Immerhin im Punkt der Verwahrlosung stimmen beide überein, wenn auch mit gegensätzlichen Vorzeichen. Es ist die Abwesenheit der Eltern oder anderer Bezugspersonen, die sich dieser Kinder bzw. jungen Erwachsenen annehmen, die zur Verwahrlosung führte und bestätigt meine These, dass sich mit Geld allein Probleme nicht lösen lassen.
Beide Welten sind mit völlig fremd und obwohl ich selbst in den Achtzigern eine junge Erwachsene war, so kam mir fast nichts bekannt vor. Ich musste die angesagten Modelabels oder Modedrogen googlen und las fassungslos von der Leere eines jungen Lebens, das nur auf Konsum ausgerichtet war und ansonsten aus gigantischer Langeweile bestand.
Das Buch hat keine Handlung und keinen roten Faden, aus meiner Sicht ist es eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, in denen eine kranke Gesellschaft beschrieben wird. Es soll eine Art Fortsetzung von American Psycho sein, das ich nicht las, aber im Kino sah. Mit dem Film konnte ich wenig anfangen, es war hilfreicher, das Buch zu lesen, um die Stimmung in einer bestimmten Schicht in Los Angelos zu begreifen. Die Darstellung einer kaputten Generation ist gut gelungen, die Leere des Lebens und die Langeweile waren greifbar, aber sie wirkten sich auf die Lektüre selbst aus. Ab einem bestimmten Punkt fühlte ich mich gelangweilt, angeödet von Ziel- und Sinnlosigkeit. In manchen Beschreibungen wird klar, dass die Elterngeneration ein ähnliches Leben führte, aber ein wenig mehr über die Hintergründe hätte ich mir gewünscht.
Der Titel des Buches blieb mir bis zum Schluss ein Rätsel. Kann mir einer erklären, welchen Zusammenhang es zum Inhalt gibt?
Kann es einen größeren Gegensatz geben, als Gusel Jachinas „Wo vielleicht das Leben wartet“ und Bret Easton Ellis „Die Informanten“ hintereinander zu lesen? Das eine handelt von Hunger und unvorstellbarer Armut, von verwahrlosten Kindern nach Krieg und Auflösung gesellschaftlicher Strukturen, das andere handelt von unvorstellbarem Überfluss, von Übersättigung und Wohlstandverwahrlosung. Immerhin im Punkt der Verwahrlosung stimmen beide überein, wenn auch mit gegensätzlichen Vorzeichen. Es ist die Abwesenheit der Eltern oder anderer Bezugspersonen, die sich dieser Kinder bzw. jungen Erwachsenen annehmen, die zur Verwahrlosung führte und bestätigt meine These, dass sich mit Geld allein Probleme nicht lösen lassen.
Beide Welten sind mit völlig fremd und obwohl ich selbst in den Achtzigern eine junge Erwachsene war, so kam mir fast nichts bekannt vor. Ich musste die angesagten Modelabels oder Modedrogen googlen und las fassungslos von der Leere eines jungen Lebens, das nur auf Konsum ausgerichtet war und ansonsten aus gigantischer Langeweile bestand.
Das Buch hat keine Handlung und keinen roten Faden, aus meiner Sicht ist es eine Kurzgeschichtensammlung, in denen eine kranke Gesellschaft beschrieben wird. Es soll eine Art Fortsetzung von American Psycho sein, das ich nicht las, aber im Kino sah. Mit dem Film konnte ich wenig anfangen, es war hilfreicher, das Buch zu lesen, um die Stimmung in einer bestimmten Schicht in Los Angelos zu begreifen. Die Darstellung einer kaputten Generation ist gut gelungen, die Leere des Lebens und die Langeweile waren greifbar, aber sie wirkten sich auf die Lektüre selbst aus. Ab einem bestimmten Punkt fühlte ich mich gelangweilt, angeödet von Ziel- und Sinnlosigkeit. In manchen Beschreibungen wird klar, dass die Elterngeneration ein ähnliches Leben führte, aber ein wenig mehr über die Hintergründe hätte ich mir gewünscht.
Der Titel des Buches blieb mir bis zum Schluss ein Rätsel. Kann mir einer erklären, welchen Zusammenhang es zum Inhalt gibt?
July 8, 2010
#30
Well, this is it. The first book so bad and uninteresting that I actually put it down before I finished it. Oddly enough, I got almost 2/3 through it! But last night I was just DONE. Started skimming so much and then downright paging through to other chapters, then to the end, then said "enough!"
It start off THAT bad which is why I got so far in. But the supposedly connected series of short stories were just too damn confusing. I sent most of each chapter trying to remember how each person was connected to previous stories and then I realized it just should not be that hard. Ever story was told in the first person & it seemed like it took until 2-3 pages in to figure out who it was talking. I realize this was supposed to BE highlighting the uglier side of the bored wealthy families in LA in the 80s, but still - the dialogue was too shallow even for that. There was not one single character (if I could figure out who they were) who was interesting or compelling or someone I wanted to learn more about. Pffffffffffffft!
Well, this is it. The first book so bad and uninteresting that I actually put it down before I finished it. Oddly enough, I got almost 2/3 through it! But last night I was just DONE. Started skimming so much and then downright paging through to other chapters, then to the end, then said "enough!"
It start off THAT bad which is why I got so far in. But the supposedly connected series of short stories were just too damn confusing. I sent most of each chapter trying to remember how each person was connected to previous stories and then I realized it just should not be that hard. Ever story was told in the first person & it seemed like it took until 2-3 pages in to figure out who it was talking. I realize this was supposed to BE highlighting the uglier side of the bored wealthy families in LA in the 80s, but still - the dialogue was too shallow even for that. There was not one single character (if I could figure out who they were) who was interesting or compelling or someone I wanted to learn more about. Pffffffffffffft!
January 22, 2019
We all know it.
They are out there, the hip ones, the rich ones, the drug addicts and the perverts.
The young and not so young well tanned on high doses of alcohol and prescription and def. non-prescription drugs are just soooo bored - and boring.
Nevertheless, once again Bret Easton Ellis feels a calling to describe them all in detail.
Whereas American Psycho was a wake-up call, pointing at the utter restlessness of a twisted brain leading to - for lack of better words - nihilistic behavior in extremis, The Informers is nothing but a "Let me see if I can drive this one to the bank".
2 stars for the ability to put together full sentences.
They are out there, the hip ones, the rich ones, the drug addicts and the perverts.
The young and not so young well tanned on high doses of alcohol and prescription and def. non-prescription drugs are just soooo bored - and boring.
Nevertheless, once again Bret Easton Ellis feels a calling to describe them all in detail.
Whereas American Psycho was a wake-up call, pointing at the utter restlessness of a twisted brain leading to - for lack of better words - nihilistic behavior in extremis, The Informers is nothing but a "Let me see if I can drive this one to the bank".
2 stars for the ability to put together full sentences.
March 29, 2020
Pretty disappointing. My fourth BEE novel, and definitely the worst one yet. This was the first book published after American Psycho and that must have drained him, because this is nowhere near his normal standards. Definitely not a good example of Ellis at his top form. Some of the chapters were okay, some were damn right awful; the vampires chapter, for example, can just have a big 1 star label slapped onto it. There were, that I could see, two references to his previous books though. There was a DISAPPEAR HERE sign, like from Less Than Zero and in the final chapter in the zoo the protagonist says something about it being so quiet, someone could be murdered there. I am pretty sure Bateman kills a kid in a zoo in AP, so I guess he is referencing that, unless it's a happy coincidence.
I did, however, play Bret Easton Ellis bingo whilst reading this. I saw on Goodreads somewhere Murakami bingo and thought it was pretty funny, there are many writers who you could play the game with. So, this was everything in this book that I've seen before, that is ticked off the BEE Bingo:
- L.A.
- Valium
- Trump Tower
- Armani
- Psychiatrists
- Dead Animals
- MTV
- Affairs
- Bisexual Flirting
- Sex with Minors
- Killing Women
- GQ
- Cocaine
I did, however, play Bret Easton Ellis bingo whilst reading this. I saw on Goodreads somewhere Murakami bingo and thought it was pretty funny, there are many writers who you could play the game with. So, this was everything in this book that I've seen before, that is ticked off the BEE Bingo:
- L.A.
- Valium
- Trump Tower
- Armani
- Psychiatrists
- Dead Animals
- MTV
- Affairs
- Bisexual Flirting
- Sex with Minors
- Killing Women
- GQ
- Cocaine
Read
December 8, 2021I was told this was a collection of short stories, but the synopsis calls it a novel. It's both. I was turned onto Ellis because someone reading my book SLOW BURN ON RIVERSIDE said it reminded them on Ellis. Because I'm always on the look for anything similar to my own prose and themes, I was excited to dive in. Glad I did.
While this is much more meandering than my own stuff, I definitely see the similarities. I would have liked this more if it had a more visible thread with the stories, rather than struggling to remember all the characters and events that link the stories together; however, I did enjoy the prose (most of it) and will definitely be reading another Ellis book soon. Discovering him was encouraging, knowing there is an audience out there who love books about nothing but people living their miserable lives, boosting my confidence to continue writing more books that wade into this territory.
While this is much more meandering than my own stuff, I definitely see the similarities. I would have liked this more if it had a more visible thread with the stories, rather than struggling to remember all the characters and events that link the stories together; however, I did enjoy the prose (most of it) and will definitely be reading another Ellis book soon. Discovering him was encouraging, knowing there is an audience out there who love books about nothing but people living their miserable lives, boosting my confidence to continue writing more books that wade into this territory.
August 25, 2016
Ellis is a great writer when it comes to observing the bland superficiality of our modern society, savagely satirical depictions of capitalist America and its inhabitants.
One of my favourite short story collections from a master writer.
One of my favourite short story collections from a master writer.
July 29, 2025
Hasta ahora lo más flojo que he leído de Bret. Aunque me confieso adicto a esa voz narrativa narcotizada apática y disociada, sigue siendo Bret
September 7, 2016
I don’t know why I keep coming back to Bret Easton Ellis, I never seem to overly enjoy his vacuous characters but something keeps drawing me back. The Informers is my forth Ellis book and this one is a collection of short stories that ultimately link together to make an overall story. Think Crash (the movie) but with shallow characters. The Informers follow the lives of several interconnected characters, they all eat at the same places; sleep with the same people and pretty much act like each other.
Each chapter is told from a different character in a first person prospective and in the end each point of view come together to make a very loosely connected story. The characters remind me a lot of Less than Zero but most of the characters in The Informers are supposed to be adults. There are a lot of conversations in this book between different characters and this is the part of the book that Bret Easton Ellis does best. He seems to be able to have a lot of conversations and still drive the plot without adding to much more and the interactions between the people seem to feel very natural.
The book feels shallow and cynical; it tries to spotlight a moral decline of Californian life. Most of Bret Easton Ellis novels feel the same, he is often called a moral satirist but I often feel like he is just a nihilist. But I still feel the need to read his books; even if I don’t enjoy them (except for Imperial Bedrooms). Ellis has an interesting style and if I rate his books from worst to best, it looks like he is improving as a writer with age. This might be the fact that his books are more and more metafictional and that seems to help add depth into a book a shallow annoying characters.
Each chapter is told from a different character in a first person prospective and in the end each point of view come together to make a very loosely connected story. The characters remind me a lot of Less than Zero but most of the characters in The Informers are supposed to be adults. There are a lot of conversations in this book between different characters and this is the part of the book that Bret Easton Ellis does best. He seems to be able to have a lot of conversations and still drive the plot without adding to much more and the interactions between the people seem to feel very natural.
The book feels shallow and cynical; it tries to spotlight a moral decline of Californian life. Most of Bret Easton Ellis novels feel the same, he is often called a moral satirist but I often feel like he is just a nihilist. But I still feel the need to read his books; even if I don’t enjoy them (except for Imperial Bedrooms). Ellis has an interesting style and if I rate his books from worst to best, it looks like he is improving as a writer with age. This might be the fact that his books are more and more metafictional and that seems to help add depth into a book a shallow annoying characters.
January 9, 2018
— "Imagine a blind person dreaming," she says. "You can't understand, you can't comprehend the pain." —
A gathering of thirteen loosely interrelated short stories set primarily in 1980s Los Angeles. Drugs, expensive cars, designer clothes, and everyone unsuccessfully navigating and relating to love and lovers and one-night lubricated stands and friends and family and whatever else there might be out there.
For me, it's solely about the first-person present tense all hard angles and go and fuck you for looking back. The corners cut the unsuspecting reader, and each story is the introduction of a new narrator with no concern for explanation or excuses. What's missing is almost more interesting than what's present.
Okay, so it's a little disconcerting and maybe a little self-indulgent being shoved so far out one's own skull, like being flung into a distant orbit, knowing (hoping) you'll return, but not for a while, and you might as well enjoy the view before the wreck.
Now, we must have a vigorous loofah and several scalding baths/showers, and after, maybe some hot cocoa and watch the Sound of Music, that, or we'll just uncork a bottle and drink ourselves into a curled stupor until all the bad things go away.
A gathering of thirteen loosely interrelated short stories set primarily in 1980s Los Angeles. Drugs, expensive cars, designer clothes, and everyone unsuccessfully navigating and relating to love and lovers and one-night lubricated stands and friends and family and whatever else there might be out there.
For me, it's solely about the first-person present tense all hard angles and go and fuck you for looking back. The corners cut the unsuspecting reader, and each story is the introduction of a new narrator with no concern for explanation or excuses. What's missing is almost more interesting than what's present.
Okay, so it's a little disconcerting and maybe a little self-indulgent being shoved so far out one's own skull, like being flung into a distant orbit, knowing (hoping) you'll return, but not for a while, and you might as well enjoy the view before the wreck.
Now, we must have a vigorous loofah and several scalding baths/showers, and after, maybe some hot cocoa and watch the Sound of Music, that, or we'll just uncork a bottle and drink ourselves into a curled stupor until all the bad things go away.
November 30, 2020
ellis here interweaves the lives of a families in los angeles, pushing further than he had in rules of attraction or less than zero but pumping the brakes a little on the extended hyper violence of american psycho (though there is some of that too). this isn't really a collection of short stories, though it's kind of presented as one. it's about film executives and bratty kids and vampires and broken marriages and rock stars all nonlinear but thematic in its mapping the detachment from one groups of young adults and their parents, almost like larry clark's (and harmony korine's) kids and ken park. this is some of ellis' best writing and the complex structure makes it interesting. it's nonlinear and the stories only tangentially relate through character names and locations, giving full time to one character or another but never bothering to fully resolve anyone's stories. some of the chapters here are better than others and if you want to read them independently of the whole thing functioning as a novel I think that'd be fine: highlights are "at the still point," "discovering Japan," "the secrets of summer," and "the fifth wheel."
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