The Informers by Bret Ellis August Book Club

P.S.
And seriously, a vampire?

I thought Caligula was going to start this topic?

Anyway, I disagree with the majority of these reviews. It's a collection of short stories, some playing into others, all dealing with Ellis's normal themes. As for the Vampire story, like any story it's subjective. I read it as people who decided to drink blood, slaughter kids, and avoid sunlight. The characters are three dimensional, as such their dialogue is conflicted, their emotions are paled by too much money and too many drugs. Most people, and thus readers, are idiots though. So I don't much care for anyone else's opinion unless it's correct.

[QUOTE=corellion;1014485]The characters are three dimensional, as such their dialogue is conflicted, their emotions are paled by too much money and too many drugs.[/QUOTE]

Do you have some specific examples? Of the three-dimensional part, I mean. Conflicted dialogue.

No. Read the book.

Easy Cor.

Thanks TS for starting this up. I'm still in the middle of it, but I must say, at first I thought to myself, "Well, I'm done with BEE. This sucks." And compared to how much I like AP, maybe. BUT, after giving it a little more time, I'm getting into it, and really starting to enjoy it. I'll have to wait until I'm done to post up specifics, but you kids play nice and discuss these topics with respect, yo.

I think you have to look past the vapid characters to see that under all of these people is emotion - love, hate, pain, pleasure - the whole gamut.

I do love the music references. To paraphrase:

"Who is that son?"

"Devo, I think."

"Devo you say?"

"Yes, Devo."

Song ends. New one comes on.

"Who's that?"

"Missing Persons."

"Missing Persons you say?"

"Yes."

so funny - i fear i may have that conversation some day, and of course, seeing who BEE picks as representative of the hot music is also a treat

read on,
richard

[QUOTE=corellion;1014594]No. Read the book.[/QUOTE]

Alright, killer.
I just thought that since it was your point that you might like to share. You know, like this was some kind of discussion board.

[QUOTE=wickerkat;1014603]

I do love the music references. To paraphrase:

"Who is that son?"

"Devo, I think."

"Devo you say?"

"Yes, Devo."

Song ends. New one comes on.

"Who's that?"

"Missing Persons."

"Missing Persons you say?"

"Yes."

[/QUOTE]

I enjoyed the references as well. The little cultural cues were nice, like the way the characters bring up small specific items, like Wayfarers, instead of saying, "Boy, the 80's are the best time ever!"
Perhaps the book is meant to be representative of the decade(?) The Me Generation, a resurgence of commercialsim and capitalism in the U.S. Maybe Ellis is embodying a vapid, confused, but ultimately not lacking in heart decade within each character as well as in the setting.

Thanks for getting the ball rolling, guys. Here's an interesting quote that I found from Ellis.

"What I've always been interested in as a writer is this idea of a group of people who seem to have everything going for them on the outside. Because of that, they have a lot of freedom. The theme of my fiction is the abuse of that freedom."

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire book is basically about a feeling of disconnectedness? People who use their money, their drugs, their sunglasses, or their music to create barriers between themselves and others, as well as the world at large, and even their own personal history. All the characters seem lost in an attempt to numb themselves to the world and to reality.

Its amusing that at no point, does Bret (or his publishers) attempt to state that its a collection of short stories.
The Vampire short in perticualr, was intresting as he avoided all the usual Clishe things, that we expect from vampire stories and took it down a more Poppy Z Brite route, of making the fact that they were vampires, more secondry to anything else really. I mean he spends most of it describing them sitting around constantly rewatching the Sean Penn Movie.

[QUOTE=Caligula7;1014845]Thanks for getting the ball rolling, guys. Here's an interesting quote that I found from Ellis.

"What I've always been interested in as a writer is this idea of a group of people who seem to have everything going for them on the outside. Because of that, they have a lot of freedom. The theme of my fiction is the abuse of that freedom."[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the quote. That's interesting.
It's certainly a theme, maybe most evident in [I]American Psycho[/I] and [I]Glamorama.[/I] It's strange that he considers his characters abusers of freedom when they act in the ways that many people in power act. Ex: Drunk Driving Presidents, Misbehaving Nike CEO.
But maybe he makes a good point about those regular, maybe even hyper-regular people getting away with more. I'm thinking the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey, for instance.

what i always found interesting (still about halfway through Informers) from AP and Glam, was showing how these people who supposedly had "everything" were in a lot of ways more miserable then "normal" people

there is for sure a disconnect in Informers, and his other work, but what i am getting from it so far is that we don't really know what somebody is thinking or feeling - you see the father and he thinks and hopes his children are one way, but when we get their side of the story, it not only the opposite, but almost oblivious to outsiders - nihilism - everyone is into themselves, and screw the rest of you

very interesting dynamic so far

Alright, so for those who are finished with the novel, I'd like to know your opinions on a couple of parts. In [I]The Secrets of Summer[/I], do you believe that the Jamie character is a real vampire or someone affecting (a rather bloody) pose? His therapist certainly doesn't believe it to be true. Are Jamie and his friends real vampires, freaks who like to pretend they're vampires, or is Jamie just a very confused nutjob??? Does your take on this chapter affect the way you perceive the book as a whole? (I've heard some people say that the vampire chapter strains the credibility of the entire book to the point of no return.)

Also, in the last chapter, [I]At the Zoo with Bruce[/I], when Bruce tells no-name protagonist:

"Listen- My name is Yocnor and I am from the planet Arachanoid and it is located in a galaxy that Earth has not yet discovered and probably never will. I have been on your planet according to your time for the past four hundred thousand years and I was sent here to collect behavioral data which will enable us to eventually take over and destroy all other existing galaxies including yours. It will be a horrible month, since Earth will be destroyed in increments and there will be suffering and pain on a level your mind will never be able to understand. But you will not experience this demise firsthand because it will occur in Earth's twenty-fourth century and you will be dead long before that. I know you will find this hard to believe but for once I am telling you the truth. We will never speak of this again."

So what's that about??? How do you interpret it? Is Bruce just an asshole who will say anything to avoid having to discuss the real nature of the relationship? Does he actually believe any of this? Or is it maybe even true?

Any thoughts or comments are welcome...

p102:

"I'm surprised to see you like this," I manage to say.

"Why?" William asks from across the room.

"Because you've never felt anything for anybody."

"That isn't true," he says. "What about you?"

"You were never there. You were never there." I stop. "You were never...alive."

"I was...alive," he says feebly. "Alive?"

"No, you weren't," I say. "You know what I mean."

"What was I then?"

"You were just"—I pause, look out over the expanse of white carpet into a massive white kitchen, white chairs on a gleaming tile floor—"not dead."

i think that kind of sums up my perception of these guys so far, all of them

[QUOTE=Caligula7;1015787]Are Jamie and his friends real vampires, freaks who like to pretend they're vampires, or is Jamie just a very confused nutjob??? [/QUOTE]

It's a tough question. I looked through to something that I could point to and say, "Therefore we know they are or are not vampires." But I didn't find a damn thing.
My gut instinct is to say no based only on the fact that I would hate it if they were. Also, maybe he's just letting the characters take the nightlifer stereotype to the maximum. The characters only go out at night (to party, in this case), they're pale (part of an aesthetic in this case), they feel they are above most humans (because of wealth or power in this case). Maybe they are just using the classic archetype.
On the other hand, B.E.E. said in interviews how much he admired Stephen King and Lunar Park was definitely a venture into the horror vein, so who knows? Maybe it ties in with that quote you posted earlier in which he said he liked to show people who have everything misbehaving. In a way, I suppose vampires would be a next level of having everything.

Maybe another question is, Do Jamie and his friends actually think they are vampires or not? Do THEY believe it?

It's a metaphor.

[QUOTE=tomstrong83;1016068]It's a tough question. I looked through to something that I could point to and say, "Therefore we know they are or are not vampires." But I didn't find a damn thing.
My gut instinct is to say no based only on the fact that I would hate it if they were. Also, maybe he's just letting the characters take the nightlifer stereotype to the maximum. The characters only go out at night (to party, in this case), they're pale (part of an aesthetic in this case), they feel they are above most humans (because of wealth or power in this case). Maybe they are just using the classic archetype.
On the other hand, B.E.E. said in interviews how much he admired Stephen King and Lunar Park was definitely a venture into the horror vein, so who knows? Maybe it ties in with that quote you posted earlier in which he said he liked to show people who have everything misbehaving. In a way, I suppose vampires would be a next level of having everything.

Maybe another question is, Do Jamie and his friends actually think they are vampires or not? Do THEY believe it?[/QUOTE]

Oh, I think they HAVE to believe it for the story to work at all. If they sincerely believe they are vampires, then it almost becomes immaterial whether or not it's true. They believe that they have some sort of right to murder people and so they do it.

And I like what you said about the supposed "vampires" being the next level of having it all. It makes me think about the fact that with so much casual violence in his work, the vampire characters are almost the logical extension of that. Sort of a caricature of the immoral, bloodthirsty, Hollywood types that exist as if there were no consequences to any of their actions and who are constantly chasing a sort of false youth.

I especially enjoy the way that Ellis treats everyone's lives as equally boring, pedestrian, and tedious. I mean, whether you're talking to a rockstar, film director, trust-fund kid, or a vampire(!) the conversations remain the same. Small talk about Sean Penn movies, and Go-Go's records. Restaurants and gossip.

It's a strange F. Scott Fitzgerald kind of tone that somehow emanates from a rich vampire telling jokes about Ethiopians. It shows you that money and power do not equal goodness or morality. The elite are shown to be vacuous, hateful, and dull.

[QUOTE=corellion;1016069]It's a metaphor.[/QUOTE]

Well, of course it's a metaphor in terms of the relationship between the vampire construct and the reader, but that doesn't bar us from being able to look closely at the internal logic of the story and interpret how literally we're supposed to read that metaphor. The metaphor works whether the characters are crazy vampire fucks or just crazy fucks. We're just having some fun exploring the text...

Here's a pretty good quote from an essay about Ellis (I'll go back and get the URL, so I can cite it.):

"If the relation between author, text, and reader is ambiguous in [I]American Psycho[/I], authorial comment seems foregrounded through the narrative strategies of [I]The Informers[/I]. An impressionistic composite of narrative voices, this novel presents the estrangement between the generations and between the sexes in affluent Los Angeles. Images of anomie and personal and familial dissociation are interwoven with scenes of sexual violence that accelerate as the novel shifts into gothic fantasy, with vampires preying on their victims, and then moves toward a conclusion with the depiction of the sexual assault, torture, and murder of a child. The willfully blind romantic fantasy that concludes the novel would seem to draw attention to the cultural disavowal of what Ellis, speaking of the 1980s, has described as "the absolute banality of a perverse decade."

It's interesting that similar questions arose in the [I]American Psycho [/I]thread. Basically, Ellis's narrators are blatantly unreliable and everything that they tell us has to be considered suspect by the reader. Someone paraphrased a quote from Ellis in the other thread where he basically suggested that all the violence in AP is essentially a fantasy that Bateman indulges in. That, in reality, he is only thinking bad thoughts and drawing nasty cartoons, but isn't really killing anyone. Of course, others have suggested that Ellis only turned to that "It's all just a dream" stuff when the public outcry against his work became too much to bear. At least in [I]The Informers[/I], the reader is relatively certain that the murders are actually happening. The question is why, I guess.

And there is a certain charm to Ellis leaving the text open enough for each reader to interpret in their own fashion. If the reader wants to believe there are aliens and vampires in Hollywood, he/she is allowed that. On the other hand, if we want to believe that these ideas are just defense mechanisms against intimacy and communication, then that avenue is open as well.

(If anyone can find a definitive quote from Ellis regarding these interpretations of his work, PLEASE post them. Thanks!)

caligula7 - great posts, fantastic - love what you're saying and i agree - nicely said

[QUOTE=wickerkat;1016420]caligula7 - great posts, fantastic - love what you're saying and i agree - nicely said[/QUOTE]

Thanks. I was beginning to wonder if I was having a conversation with myself in this thread! C'mon gang, surely there are more than 5 of us who have read this book. Opinions? Insights? Funny quips? Anybody? Is this thing on?

sorry, haven't quite finished it yet, so still digesting - but i will say that i'm liking it more and more the farther i get into it - at the beginning, i thought to myself "That's it, I'm over BEE. AP was so much better." Now, I still think AP was a lot better, but I'm starting to think BEE is sneaky smart, subtle while being in your face

will post more when i finish - gotta soak it up

"The Informers Casting
Looks like The Informers film is either casting or at least accepting submissions. Good news either way that the project continues to move forward (thouth it does still have Nick Jarecki listed as director).

The Informers, based on a 1994 novel by Bret Easton Ellis that follows the adventures of a group of characters in 1983 Los Angeles. Movie executives, rock stars, and a vampire are involved in stories laced with sex, drugs, and violence. Nick Jarecki directs the screenplay he wrote with Ellis. Casting: Automatic Sweat, 5243 W. Washington Blvd., L.A., CA 90016."

[URL=http://notanexit.net/past/the_informers_film/](Link to original article)[/URL]

So, who would you cast yourself as?

I thought it was a pretty good read except for the last chapter how he ended it. Is he just say like how all these people are crazy or disattched from real life. I really dont know.

[QUOTE=tomstrong83;1019957]
So, who would you cast yourself as?[/QUOTE]

I'd like to see myself as Bryan Metro, the debauched rockstar from the [I]Discovering Japan [/I]chapter, but I could probably pull off the fat, greasy psychopath Peter from [I]The Fifth Wheel[/I] a little easier.

Bumpin' this thread in the hopes of getting some more comments.

:eek2:

I enjoyed this more than Less Than Zero, but not nearly as much as American Psycho.

The themes seem pretty obvious - his usual disconnected stuff, as most have pointed out - and there were definitely some stories that were not that great. The first two almost turned me off because they just seemed like an even more inferior Less Than Zero, but then I started getting into it during "The Up Escalator." I don't know why, but it might have been because it was directly exploring the debauchery etcetera of the rich and "entitled" adults, rather than just the usual passing comments made about them by kids who are all on Valium and Xanax and cocaine. I admit that I really disliked the main character in that story though, because she just seemed like such a bitch. I was rooting for her husband, and was sad to learn of his death in "Another Gray Area."

"The Secrets of Summer" and "Discovering Japan" were the two best chapters in my opinion, and I think it's because they were sort of funnier. Jamie seems to be the narrative pre-cursor to Patrick Bateman, and I just kept waiting for him to find Tim Price and give him a high-five. It seems to me that whether or not he's really a vampire is irrelevant, because as has been mentioned, it's a completely secondary part of the story. It does cause some funny moments, though, like the description of his pimped-out coffin. Speaking of which, I have to disagree with whomever said he avoided all of the vampire cliches, because there were coffins and wooden stakes through the heart and such, so clearly he didn't stray too far from the pack in that.

Bruce's alien claim seemed to me to be an obvious attempt to evade talking about leaving his wife, because while there is a hint of supernatural elements with the vampires, this would just be a left-field inclusion; plus, we already know that Bruce wants to nail her but doesn't want to actually leave his wife for her, so as far as I can see it's just a half-assed, ludicrous attempt on his part to try and keep her content.

Again, it was basically par for the course as far as Ellis goes. It had "vacuous" characters and really long sentences and the similar themes he explores. It seems to me that humour is really lacking in his early work, up until American Psycho. Actually, only AP and Glamorama were really funny - Lunar Park was just sort of lame.

I'm sorry, gotta bump and join in on this conversation.

At first when i started reading the informers, like someone said earlier in the thread i was thinking ellis has really fuck up on this book, cause when you start getting into a story it just ends so suddenly, a prime example being 'In the Islands' the father and son short story and 'Discovering Japan' about the burned out rock star, both stories could of held there own as novels. After reading though, an reflecting on the book, i concluded that it is probably one of the best ellis noves simply cause it shows his genius and diversity as a writer (something i find in chuck aswell), he can one minute write as a rock star, then the next a vampire, and even quite realistcally write as a kidknapper.

I'm very much so looking forward to the film adaptation, i hope they do the book justice.

Aside from that, and apologies for the bump, but looking back over this - I agree with Caligula completely. Should be more people like him about.

Missed out on this. Read the book after you recommended it. Liked it. Thought it lacked structure (hello BEE) and it left me wanting more (closure) but a good read over all.