Education of a Felon : A Memoir

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Edward Bunker
Publisher:	St. Martin's Griffin
Release date:	18 August, 2001
List price:	~~$14.95~~
Our price:	$10.17 that is 32% off!

Education of a Felon : A Memoir

Average rating: Stars

Breaking the Law!

Ya know, sometimes---to paraphrase the Lucrezia Borgia of our time, Hilary Clinton---it takes a jailhouse to raise a writer.

Just ask Eddie Bunker, who serves up a crackling, earthy, deadpan honest and infuriatingly good read in "Education of a Felon", which just goes to show that if our man Eddie had been born on a beach in Tunis about two thousand years ago, he would probably have been St. Augustine.

No, seriously: stay with me for a second. I'm not just trying to get a rise outta ya.

But first, let's get all the turkey and trimmings out of the way: "Education" is a rippingly good true-crime read about a kid born and raised in the seamier shadow of Hollywood, a few years after they sheared "Land" off the famous hillside sign.

Bunker is a kid whose chorus girl mother left his alcoholic stagehand father, a kid who made the rounds of every boarding school, military school, and afternoon-orphange in town, a kid who wanted to get out there---you know, out there, Man, on the drive, around the town, in a loud, lavish 52 Chrysler, with a hot blonde bombshell on his arm, doing the town. A kid who made one stupid move after another, engaged in petty crime, and ultimately spent the bulk of his life in one p*ss-reeking cell after another in San Quentin.

Eddie Bunker might not have been born to be bad, but he sure grew that way.

Now: because American society languishes, for the most part, in the suburbs, and because most reasonably-heeled American men go from cradle to corpse without running afoul of the law, there is a mystifying tendency in America to glorify, to idealize, to ennoble the badman. The Noble Outlaw, the exciting Other, the bandito festooned with his bandoliers and blazing pistols, stalking into a bank, brandishing his hot irons, and looting the place.

It's romantic, isn't it?

No, actually, it isn't. You'll get a lot of gritty true-crime in "Education of a Felon", all told with honesty, verve, and a surprising glibness. Just get past the first 5 pages---with are lumpy, and heavy, and a little goofy, and might make you cringe---and you'll see that Bunker is a natural writer who has really taken pains to hone his style, to craft a story that tells, that rivets, that engages, that entertains. Like I said, it's a ripping read.

But that's not really what makes "Education of a Felon" such a delicious experience: no, it's the fact that while Edward the Thief does one stupid thing after another to get himself locked up in the Bighouse, end the end it's the Bighouse that serves as his monastery, his respite from his own worst instincts, and the proving ground for his experiences and the solitude in which he can write them down, and make them talk.

The true crime bit? C'mon. In his rounds at San Quentin and pretty much every other California penal institution, Bunker runs into the true criminal mad dogs and masterminds of his day: Caryl Chessman, death-row lawyer and small-time monster, for instance. But most of these guys---the author included---are in for small-fry stuff: robbery, theft, drugs, pimping, the usual. Next to Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, or even the Popes of the Middle Ages, Bunker's crimes are strictly small-time.

It's the writing that transcends the man, and the writing got done in the Bighouse.

Now: the solitary writer, the caged mystic, is not a new phenomenon in the world of letters. Jesus Christ had his wilderness; St. Anthony had his cave full of demons. The suicidal Yukio Mushima penned his Samurai epics locked up in his tiny writer's study, where behind a solid, locked wooden door he gave vent to his hungry demons; Hemingway did it in tiny bungalows on Hawaii and Cuba.

Bunker needed iron bars and the Hole to get the fire out of his system. And if you read "Education of a Felon", you'll see that: when he's in the Big House, he writes like a fool. He bleeds his life into the paper. When he gets out, even with all the tools supplied him by Hal Wallis's wife Louise (including a swank bachelor pad), he leaves off writing to go wrangle chicks and booze and drugs. And back to the BigHouse he goes, to think and write.

Anyway, this is a gripping read you can finish in two hours. There are some beautiful sequences, all written in the same gritty, steady hand: a few stolen moments in the Neptune Pool at San Simeon, or spending a fleeting instant with the Old Miser himself, William Randolph Hearst, a man locked in a very different sort of cage.

Check it out. In Jailhouse parlance: it's all Good.

JSG

Education of a Felon : A Memoir - Edward Bunker

One of my heroes

Like Edward Bunker I am a convicted armed robber and also like Mr Bunker I am a published author. He is an enormous inspiration to me.

Edward Bunker - Education of a Felon : A Memoir

Good, but troubling

Bunker's definitely a felon, a bad person who has hurt others
throughout his life. But he can write, and he opens a window to a ruthless underground jungle few of us ever see. I sure wouldn't want him as a friend (few have escaped that role unscathed) but the books are compelling. Somewhat reminiscent of Bukowski's self-justifying assault on convention: highly entertaining if taken in the right spirit.

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