Ellis is a freak. The first half of the book was dreadfully boring & hard to follow; if you stick around for the latter half, it gets abysmally dark & bizarrely satisfying. I will say, the indifferent & nihilistic tone he takes is by far one of my favorites. He is very Camus in his description of human horrors & the mind of man. If you can bear 100 pages of slow, miserable, apathetic descriptors of tan, blonde, twenty somethings popping Valium & screwing, you’re in for a treat toward the finish line. I think I would need to read it again to fully grasp the inter-connectedness of characters, but I’m not sure I would ever make the time for it.

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While this is not the most obscene, depraved thing I have ever read/heard (big ups to China Mieville there), I think it's a solid second place. In fact, I'm not sure why I even finished it, except for the very lame reason that I don't like to leave things undone. This book made me wonder if there are actually people out there like this. I have to assume yes. But then, I can't actually believe it. But then I force myself to believe it. Then I am very, very grateful I do not, so far as I know, know any of them.

To sum up (too late): obscene, depraved and, for whatever reason, vampires.

p.s. I am fully aware that I may not be Getting It. It's okay. I don't want to.

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."

Empty is as empty does--

As I thought about what made this story of Brett Easton Ellis' so awful compared to his more recognized 'American Psycho' (thank you Christian Bale!) or even more related, 'Less Than Zero'. I've only been able to arrive at the following conclusion. Unlike those other works, in very few places in 'The Informers' does one actually get a vantage point that provides a narrative contrast or "space" that allows the reader to really feel the banality of waste, selfishness, and lostness being depicted. Instead, the banality and lostness smothered this reader to the point where there was no silent place to feel anything for these characters. That is, all you have here is ...depiction, existential facades written about in a manner just as superficial. Yes, yes, I know, "Isn't that B.E.E's monkey trick anyway?" - but still, as the story went on, there was an axiomatic impact on my care to know anything more about these people or what would happen next to them, which indicates to me anyway, a certain banality in the story telling or writing itself.

Seems to me that there's a paradox at work here: One can't convey Epicurean nihilism or suicidal hedonism in a way that engages a reader unless there is a soldier's discipline in the author to not write in either of those ways.

In short; this is no Less Than Zero.

- j

For the first one hundred pages I felt like it was just a not-quite-as-interesting rehash of what Ellis did in Less than Zero. However I found myself getting drawn into the strange ties between the stories, and the way the book continues to spiral into darkness. I find it hard to believe that it isn't classified as a collection of short stories, and as such I think number #12 was the stand out one to me. Worth picking up if you're an Ellis fan, but if you find his style at all tiresome I'd skip over it for one of his more conservative pieces.

...huh!

Second Look Books: The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis (Alfred A. Knopf, $22)

Brett Easton Ellis is justly famous for his book, “American Psycho” which caused a moral firestorm when it was first published. I consider Ellis a fine American novelist who is responding to the times with a vengeance. His style is cool, detached and marvelously static, lending the proceedings a menacing tone perfectly tuned to his subject, which is postmodern life. His work can be contrasted with that of Douglas Coupland, who is a pure satirist. Ellis no doubt now thinks that things have gone so sour that satire is of no use. These days, years after “The Informers” was published, who could argue that?

Of those writers who have taken the postmodern “turn”—Brett Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, Nancy Smith, Stephen Gibb and William Gibson in the United States, and Will Smith and Martin Amis in England—perhaps Ellis is best known. His first novel, “Less than Zero,” was turned into a fittingly chilly movie about drug use and generational angst, while in all the hype and hoopla was almost lost the direct and nearly pellucid style Ellis developed while telling his postmodern tale. Of course, there is nothing new about the utter vacuity of fame and fashion in Los Angeles, but there was something new and daring in the way that Ellis related his tale, the quick cuts in and out of personalities the shifting perspective of almost Cubist intensity and the final reckless “lostness” of the whole thing.
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By the time Ellis got around to writing “American Psycho”, he managed to bring to arms a host of political correctives from the American feminist movement all the way to the hallowed halls of academia, not to mention that slough of international conglomeration that calls itself the publishing industry. It didn’t matter that “American Psycho” was brilliant satire of a most amazing and original kind, or that American life itself was infinitely more violent and demoralizing than any book could be. What mattered was that the messenger was to be slaughtered for bringing the message.
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Thus, it is a fine thing when a distinguished company like Knopf feels able to continue publishing a writer whose skills are first-rate, and whose reputation is tarnished in the darkest hues by foes of the First Amendment. What Ellis has brought forth in “The Informers” is another book about lost people in Los Angeles, written in a way reminiscent of the “cut-up” approach of William Burroughs, but without the hallucinatory properties that writer brought to the page, a novel that manages to hold together the contradictory threads of sly satire and serious narrative. About the worst that can be said about “The Informers” is that Ellis has done this before in “Less Than Zero.”
Nevertheless, his new novel is a kind of plateau from which one can view the surrounding terrain, its nooks and crannies, folds and fissures, before moving on to higher country, where both flora and fauna are likely to change. If this is a transitional work, then it is worthy.
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Ellis employs stock characters, in the sense that Bergman worked with stock actors. “The Informers” gets rolling with a scene in which a group of young students, hangers-on, ne’er-do-wells and sociopaths are having dinner in a trendy Los Angeles spot. They share a group memory of one of their troupe who has died in an automobile wreck and realize that their memories are not the same, or have been shaped differently, or overlap in curious ways. Do they have affection for their dead companion? Had he made love to a number of them, or only one? And if so, whom? In a series of relatively short chapters, which have cinematic punch, new characters are introduced, fade, die and reappear, each connected to the next, or to one who went before, but never ostensibly…only fleetingly, or unemotionally if you will.
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And so it is that a mother of one of our young group is having an affair with her young son’s friend. The son’s friend has a father who takes him to Hawaii (a memorable chapter in father-son dating techniques). The father dies in a plane crash and a young girl comes home from school back east. What is so beautiful and funny in all of this is the city of Los Angeles itself, its palm trees and placid swimming pools, its dried tomatoes and rock groups and tons and tons of Valium, not to mention vodka. Everybody is named Graham, Dirk or Raymond, and all the girls are blonde and oh-so 15 years old. It’s like dude:

"I had never really liked Carol Banks anyway. Cute, blonde, cheerleader, good SAT’s, nothing too great. Carol had always called me a nonchalant, a word I never understood the meaning of, a word I looked up in a number of French dictionaries and could never find. I never really liked Carol that much (only in bed and even there I was unsure)…I sit at the table, uncaring, not moved by what everyone but me knew."

There are at least two literary situations that are likely to unnerve those who were unnerved at “American Psycho.” One of Ellis’ characters is a vampire named Jamie, who hangs out at nightspots and malls in the Valley, where he picks up underage nymphets who hope for a “cocaine score.” Back at his unfurnished digs, Jamie “bleeds” the girls in scenes not meant for the squeamish. Satire or sensationalism? Well, perhaps if we think a bit about Los Angeles, about American culture, and if we think long enough, won’t we catch ourselves watching another tabloid feature about O.J and Nicole? Another ghastly expose about Roseanne and Tom? Nobody, not even Ellis, can compete with the real thing, after all.
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In a chapter titled “The Fifth Wheel,” two characters named Peter and Mary debate whether to kill a young kidnapping victim they’ve tied up in the bathtub. The death of the victim is as violent as it is graphic, which always will bring up the salubrious prospect that Ellis will, once again, be accused of pandering. As intelligent readers we must all decide for ourselves whether Ellis is serious (I think he is) and whether his point is well taken (I think it is).

Perhaps a word should be added about the postmodern “turn.” It is best thought of as the tacit admission by literary artists that screen-media, particularly television and computer, have revolutionized reality, and have changed for the near term our attitudes and beliefs about psychology, politics and culture. First and foremost, the “turn” is a way that writers have of conveying the fractured, multifaceted nature of existence in fast-moving cities twined together by fast moving technologies. Secondly, it is the writer’s response to the undeniable recognition that this world of international corporate conglomerate capitalism has de-spiritualized existence to an unprecedented degree, creating a faceless army of buyers, sellers and users, who know only what they want to buy and sell, use or destroy, what movie they want to see next, or what celebrity scandal interests them the most. And of course, postmodern novelists often see the traditional fictional tropes of plot, foreshadowing, character and style as culturally humiliated forms, a shabby suit of clothes.

As on of Douglas Coupland’s characters in “Shampoo Planet” exclaims: “All of my memories have corporate logos.” Or, in the words of vampire Jamie, Ellis’ nominal consumer: “We are Legion.” Indeed we are.
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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.

I thought it was a good follow up to "Less Than Zero." In short, the book is a collection of short stories (some what) told from a different person's First Person Perspective, which can be a little disorienting at first. Despite that disorientation though, it was kind of fun to figure out who the story was now following (as well as what gender they were) and how and if they were connected directly to the previous story, or any other of Bret Easton Ellis' previous books.

I really think that someone who grew up in the Los Angeles area (as opposed to only having gone down to SoCal for vacations) might get something extra out of the book with all the city/region/street name dropping that Bret Easton Ellis likes to do, but at the same time, I don't feel that I missed out on anything. There's even a character who's foreign to the area and you play witness as they're enveloped by the culture.

Anyway, I thought it was a good and fairly quick read and would recommend it to anyone who's read any of his other books or lived through Los Angeles in the 1980s.

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 n  Winesburg, Ohion 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.

Pour préparer la sortie de son nouveau livre  Les Éclats qui doit paraître au printemps, j’ai eu envie de me plonger dans le seul livre de  Bret Easton Ellis que je n’avais pas encore lu,  Zombies. C’est une originalité dans son oeuvre car il s’agit du seul recueil de nouvelles qu’il a publié. Dès les premières histoires on est en terrain connu, Los Angeles et sa Mulholland Drive, Palm Springs, le désert et évidemment Camden l’université de fiction située dans le New Hampshire.

La vie à L.A. a quelque chose de luxueux et de magnifique. C’est comme ça que j’ai envie de vivre pour toujours. Chaque jour, il y a une nouvelle aventure, une personne nouvelle à rencontrer, des choses nouvelles à voir chaque soir.

Les histoires qui composent ce recueil sont diverses mais les personnages qui les peuplent on des points communs. Ils sont riches – ou plutôt très riches – consomment de l’alcool, de la drogue et des médicaments – de préférence en grande quantité et en même temps – et son, au mieux, névrosés. Ensuite, on retrouve les thèmes habituels de l’auteur qui vont de l’oisiveté à l’horreur – il y a même une nouvelle mettant en scène des vampires. En les lisant, on pense évidemment à ses autres livres qui semblent se trouver là en germe ou en version condensé. Comme souvent avec les recueils de nouvelles, le niveau est inégal, j’ai aimé certaines histoires et détesté d’autres. Me voilà prêt, après cette révision en accéléré pour aborder son nouveau livre.

Également publié sur mon blog.