Thursday, February 02, 2006
Book Review: The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.5
Plot-5.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.6
Overall-6.7
I am a HUGE Bret Easton Ellis fan. He may well be my favorite truly contemporary author. Amy’s a big fan too. I think I’ve now read all of his work except for the latest, Lunar Park, which I’m waiting to come out in paperback.
Alright, for those of you not familiar with Ellis—he writes mainly about the 1980’s. Particularly the uber rich. His characters are typically young, rich, self-absorbed, vapid, vacuous, filled with ennui, etc—I think you get the point. Reading Ellis is like watching MTV’s Laguna Beach totally uncensored (only at some point in the show it would be revealed that Kristen, or somebody, is really a robot that runs on human blood and she starts harvesting hoboes after luring them to her estate with the promise of fetish-filled sex).
There’s tons of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It makes for exceptionally entertaining reading. But somehow, it’s got heart too.
I think that ultimately Ellis is experimenting with the question of what happens to a society or group of people that have no rules and have no needs or wants? In his world anything goes. You feel the characters constantly striving to feel something, anything. Whether it’s via drugs or sex or rape or murder or torture or whatever crazy device Ellis comes up with, its this lack of substance (I guess) in their lives because of their status and wealth that leads them to this abhorrent lifestyle.
And, Ellis is so good at putting you in that specific time and place. The lingo, the food, the fashion, the music of the 80’s he is obsessed with. It’s comical how in one novel everyone may be listening to Duran Duran whereas in another everyone may be listening to The Talking Heads and REM, or they may be wearing Polo shirts or Wayfarer sunglasses or whatever.
I don’t recommend that you start with The Informers however. The Informers is really a bunch of loosely related short stories, sort of a Bret Easton Ellis version of the movie Magnolia. If I had it to do over again, I would probably read the books chronologically in terms of when they were published. Less Than Zero was his first novel, published when he was 20 or 21 years old. And it’s a great place to start. If you like it you’ll want more, if you don’t then you wouldn’t have liked American Psycho or any of the other books of his that you might have picked up instead.
If you’ve already read Ellis and liked it, you can’t really go wrong with the Informers, it’s simply more of the same. I like all of his books but they do tend to be sort of monotonous. That said, I do think that he effectively varies his theme enough that they are all worth reading.
Originality-6.5
Plot-5.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.6
Overall-6.7
I am a HUGE Bret Easton Ellis fan. He may well be my favorite truly contemporary author. Amy’s a big fan too. I think I’ve now read all of his work except for the latest, Lunar Park, which I’m waiting to come out in paperback.
Alright, for those of you not familiar with Ellis—he writes mainly about the 1980’s. Particularly the uber rich. His characters are typically young, rich, self-absorbed, vapid, vacuous, filled with ennui, etc—I think you get the point. Reading Ellis is like watching MTV’s Laguna Beach totally uncensored (only at some point in the show it would be revealed that Kristen, or somebody, is really a robot that runs on human blood and she starts harvesting hoboes after luring them to her estate with the promise of fetish-filled sex).
There’s tons of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It makes for exceptionally entertaining reading. But somehow, it’s got heart too.
I think that ultimately Ellis is experimenting with the question of what happens to a society or group of people that have no rules and have no needs or wants? In his world anything goes. You feel the characters constantly striving to feel something, anything. Whether it’s via drugs or sex or rape or murder or torture or whatever crazy device Ellis comes up with, its this lack of substance (I guess) in their lives because of their status and wealth that leads them to this abhorrent lifestyle.
And, Ellis is so good at putting you in that specific time and place. The lingo, the food, the fashion, the music of the 80’s he is obsessed with. It’s comical how in one novel everyone may be listening to Duran Duran whereas in another everyone may be listening to The Talking Heads and REM, or they may be wearing Polo shirts or Wayfarer sunglasses or whatever.
I don’t recommend that you start with The Informers however. The Informers is really a bunch of loosely related short stories, sort of a Bret Easton Ellis version of the movie Magnolia. If I had it to do over again, I would probably read the books chronologically in terms of when they were published. Less Than Zero was his first novel, published when he was 20 or 21 years old. And it’s a great place to start. If you like it you’ll want more, if you don’t then you wouldn’t have liked American Psycho or any of the other books of his that you might have picked up instead.
If you’ve already read Ellis and liked it, you can’t really go wrong with the Informers, it’s simply more of the same. I like all of his books but they do tend to be sort of monotonous. That said, I do think that he effectively varies his theme enough that they are all worth reading.
