When I just got started into reading, Bret Easton Ellis was one of my favourite writers — I loved the cold, cynical tone that is reflective of the ennui plaguing his characters, how these characters weave in and out of each other’s storylines, even from different books, and how absurd some of the elements of the stories can be. In The Informers, vampires make an appearance in the seedy grime of Hollywood.
There is really not much of a story to The Informers, you can say that it is a collection of interconnected short stories. There are cameos of characters from other chapters, and they’re all interconnected in some ways — through affairs, drug dealers or mutual friends. All of them revolve around the ditziness of Hollywood and exorbitant and undeserving wealth. As all Ellis’s book, the sexual element is heavy, peppered with violence here and there.
It is what you can expect from a Bret Easton Ellis book, to the point that I will say that it borrows bits and pieces from his other novels and sews patches of them into the The Informers. The broad range of characters remind me of one of my favourite books by him — Rules of Attraction; the description of clothes, obsession with hip trends and brands remind me of American Psycho; the heaviness of Hollywood is in Glamorama; and the nihilistic indifference and the cold tone is perhaps closest to his debut Less Than Zero. There’s probably a bit of Lunar Park there somewhere too.
It sounds like a mess, I know. And in some ways, it is. I haven’t read any of Ellis’s books since I’ve finished university some decade ago, and I wonder if I had read any of the books above that I read before, whether I would like them the same way. I think at that time, I found his style jarring and unique, that it is very clever. Ellis does have something to say about the disparateness between people, especially in the context of Los Angeles and those who enjoy the upper echelons. But maybe that’s where the issue lies — are the characters here unique to their time and place?
It is a unique segment of society which has infinite money, at a comfortable arm’s length from Hollywood and an immense distance from anybody who is living paycheck to paycheck. So then, how can I relate to these people? But then again, why do we watch these housewives of the OC, the OC, and wealthy people who don’t know what to do with their money — whose money makes them numb and unrelatable, especially to those who matter — their wives, their kids. One of the stories is simply a father trying to reconnect to his son, and every single one of their interaction is forced and awkward.
None of the stories really have any resolution, though all of them escalate to a degree. Ellis’s voice is different, and though I’m quite familiar with the gimmick by now, I still find it refreshing. You can say his works are nihilistic, but I think the message hits home. In the midst of this indifference and ennui, the vast amounts of wealth that render a person inhuman, are really people who are still trying to connect and find meaning. And their failure to find this meaning is the real tragedy.
