Vampires, flamingos, erratic tumbleweed, "uselessly proud llamas". Busted smoke machines galore. The alien-revealing sunglassesless looks of a dream that everybody's chasing -- a nightmare on many occasions, that gnaws on everybody's flesh.

Who's everybody?
Legion.

It very much seems the social network feed of all BEE's characters.

Our parents spawned us just because. Deal with it. They trip us all the time, pretending care.
But we can't deal with it, nobody taught us how and we just didn't have the guts to find that out on our own devices.

"adjust my dreams for me"

We can just stop envying each other now.

SPOILER:
It's a sad zoo. Comes in bigger and smaller cages.

Das Buch ist das letzte Fiction-Buch von BEE, das ich noch nicht gelesen hatte, und ich finde, es ist ein guter Abschluss; ansonsten bleibt mir nur noch sein Essay White. The Informers besteht aus Kurzgeschichten, deren Charaktere alle miteinander in irgendeiner Weise verbunden sind, und es macht Spaß, diese Connections zu machen, und deshalb fühlt es sich nur bedingt anders an als ein richtiger Roman von BEE. Seine Romane sind zT auch nicht unbedingt linear erzählt, und deshalb ist The Informers vielleicht einfach das konsequenteste seiner Bücher. Vieles würde dafür sprechen, es gibt diese kurzen Momente (Momente, nicht Passagen) in diesem Buch, die so wahrhaftig sind, in einer komplett nicht-cheesy Art, dass es einem wirklich die Sprache verschlägt. Dadurch, dass der Nihilismus und die Hoffnungslosigkeit nicht wie in Less Than Zero auf 200 Seiten, sondern in kurzen Abschnitten verhandelt werden, sind sie so viel potenter. Das siebte Kapitel und die letzten 4 Kapitel sind wahrscheinlich die besten; große Empfehlung!

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.

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.

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.

i don’t think eastons style is for everyone but i loved this so much. gave me a bit of a murakami vibe with how all the stories intertwined and the slight surrealism.
obsessed, pov changes were a bit confusing sometimes though

neigt meer naar 4.5 ster maar ik moet gewoon even de goodreads average rating omhoog halen want wtf hoe bedoel je 3.4????? Dit is zo'n fucking goed boek. reviews zeggen dat het voelt als een verzameling korte verhalen alsof dat slecht is??? ik hou persoonlijk zoveel van mozaïek vertellingen dus misschien ben ik biased, maar ik vind het juist heel cool gedaan dat de hoofdstukken meer overkoepeld worden door tijd, plaats en afschuw dan door een plot en de personages. de haterz dont get it en ik zou sterven voor BEE denk ik.

Mijn favo hoofdstukken waren 'in the islands' en 'letters from L.A.' .. vooral die laatste is echt hoogstaande literatuur imo, zit zo goed in elkaar

:p :p :p xoxo

I have a lot to say about this book and most of its bad.

First of all, after the vampire chapter it started to seem like he just wanted to write about the vampires the whole time but held back for some reason. I wish he hadn't because i think that would've been way better.

Second of all, this book was kind of lowkey but also highkey racist at the same time. One named character who wasnt white in a cast of like 30 and she was a maid. This on it's own i probably wouldn't have noticed so much if it weren't for the explicit casual racism every other page. There's a difference between writing about a racist era and straight up being racist and I firmly believe this was the latter. This book would've been so much more interesting if he had written about anyone other than rich white people for even one chapter.

Third, this book was at times insanely difficult to get through just because every chapter had a crazy mundane, suicidal vibe. The first two chapters are actually pretty interesting and then it gets insanely boring. Some of the few redeeming features of this book were the moments where something actually happened which were few and far between. Like, once again, the vampires!!! That were there the whole time!!! Given that this is a short story collection, i was expecting a few boring ones because there's always some, I just wasn't expecting so many.

I will say, i think the links between stories are quite clever, and though I kind of complained about it before, the implication of the secret vampire society throughout the rest of stories was pretty cool (if you couldn't tell I'm really stuck on the vampires). Some stories had a lot more substance than others, I particularly liked At the Still Point, On the Beach, and At the Zoo with Bruce. All three didn't drag on as long as a lot of the others, hammering home the points they were supposed to make without overdoing it. Once again (again), fond of the vampires in The Secrets of Summer, but that one was also rampantly racist and involved one too many 14 year olds so I'm quite disappointed. The Fifth Wheel was okay if only for the fact that it was a bit more engaging than the others and succeeded in creeping me out in a good way.

I have a migraine.

LA's vapid hedonisim is chronicled in thirteen narratives, separate yet melding into an indistinct voice that is languidly restless, unfocused, indifferent, and rambling in a drug-induced haze; friends, lovers, spouses merit the same mention, often less favourable, as Porches, Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars, and personal financial worth. Amidst the blase disregard of relationships for transient gratification, the desire for genuine connection is thinly veiled; the son who is affected enough to disapprove the behaviour of a father with whom he'd rather not converse, the daughter who is dismayed at her father's decision to marry his lover despite her parents' history of serial affairs, the friend who cannot bear to see his friend wasting before his eyes yet is devoid of any expression of endearment or empathy.

The conscientious ease with which emotions are smothered belies the death of humanity uninformed by self-awareness (everyone else is objectified), vulnerability, or morality (that is not solely motivated by personal gratification). The semblance of life in this death asserts itself ultimately through violence and a vampiric feeding of blood. Irreversible death is momentarily allayed through its distraction in a sacrifice of blood.

The Informers continues Ellis's narrative arc depicting the moral vacuity of excess in 80s America. Compared to the unrelenting amoral depravity of American Psycho, The Informers suggests a latent, but palpable, morality that hints at some “why” to the motivations of these characters, fatuous as their espousals may be. Ellis could be compensating for the cold calculation of Bateman the pscyho with the almost heartfelt loneliness of these characters (one entire chapter consists of pleading letters to an unrequiting friend). While serial torture and murder befitted the psychotic absence of empathy for Bateman, the vampires in this novel are fuelled by an undeniable need to be undead.

Who are the informers? It seems all narrators betrayed themselves with the absence of confidence, inconsequential life stories bled of human connection.

I'm something of a completist, so I figured I still needed to read the last two Bret Easton Ellis novels, American Psycho and The Informers (1994). The Informers reads like a collection of short stories interlinking several characters who are slumbering through life at loose ends with little direction or drive. There is an element of fantasy and horror as it is revealed that some characters are vampires. Ellis is something of a moralist trying to reveal the evil and lack of morality in the mid 80s, even though the book was written in the mid 90s. I think some sections worked better than others, but there is the same sort of unease that builds over the course of the book. The people seem completely unknowable and distant as though they were from another culture. I like the slow descent into depravity as revealed through unanswered letters in "Letter from L.A." and the rock n roll excess of "Discovering Japan." I'm saving what many considered to be the best for last, American Psycho-which I feel I know somewhat intimately already since I have already seen the film and read much about it.

Decent, but my least favorite BEE books so far. I wish there had been some distinction, either on the cover or the chapter titles, that these were more themed short stories rather than a linear novel. I would have read it differently and maybe spent less time trying to figure out if the narrators had changed, if there were recurring, if the characters were interwoven, etc.

There were some great descriptions and maybe one chapter that pulled some emotional strings for me, but overall it was hard to become entirely enticed by this book. Maybe I'll read it again in the future now that I'm more prepared for the structure.

Definitely not a place to start with Bret Easton Ellis.