A review by arthuriana
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
2.0
ellis is one of those authors that i feel you have to be in the right mentality to ‘get’. there’s loads here about consumerism and superficiality and the shallowness of the relations we establish with one another in the context of a highly publicised yet never once earnest society that we’ve come to establish, but all i could say is that it falls flat and off the mark for me. is this a critique or is this just an excuse to write the same themes expounded much more brilliantly in american psycho?
there are moments where it seems unfailingly earnest, but the moments are few and far between, so that it seems much more content in wallowing in its supposed brilliance rather than actually spend the time in trying to say what it wants to say—if, indeed, this book even wants to say anything.
the blurb at the back of this book tells me it is “chillingly nihilistic”. there is nihilism abound in this book, yes, but there are none of the chills that were promised. all in all, it reads rather blandly. there’s a social phenomenon known as affluenza where rich people are shown to just not be able to comprehend the consequences of their actions, and it’s in full display here. i don’t really know what else there is to say about this book, because that’s all that’s present here. it’s as superficial as the relations that the characters have in this book with one another. some might call that methodical writing and a stroke of brilliance, but the experience of reading it and having to slog through its narrative immediately extinguishes any sort of ‘brilliance’ that can be found here.
there are moments where it seems unfailingly earnest, but the moments are few and far between, so that it seems much more content in wallowing in its supposed brilliance rather than actually spend the time in trying to say what it wants to say—if, indeed, this book even wants to say anything.
the blurb at the back of this book tells me it is “chillingly nihilistic”. there is nihilism abound in this book, yes, but there are none of the chills that were promised. all in all, it reads rather blandly. there’s a social phenomenon known as affluenza where rich people are shown to just not be able to comprehend the consequences of their actions, and it’s in full display here. i don’t really know what else there is to say about this book, because that’s all that’s present here. it’s as superficial as the relations that the characters have in this book with one another. some might call that methodical writing and a stroke of brilliance, but the experience of reading it and having to slog through its narrative immediately extinguishes any sort of ‘brilliance’ that can be found here.