Education of a Felon

by Edward Bunker

Overview

In Education of a Felon, the reigning champion of prison novelists finally tells his own story. The son of an alcoholic stagehand father and a Busby Berkeley chorus girl, Bunker was—at seventeen—the youngest inmate ever in San Quentin. His hard-won experiences on L.A.'s meanest streets and in and out of prison gave him the material to write some of the grittiest and most affecting novels of our time.

From smoking a joint in the gas chamber to leaving fingerprints on a knife connected to a serial kiler, from Hollywood's steamy undersde to swimming in the Neptune pool at San Simeon, Bunker delivers a memoir as colorful as any of his novels and as compelling as the life he's lead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312280765
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/18/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Edward Bunker lives in Los Angeles with his wife. He is the author of the books No Beast So Fierce, Animal Factory, and Little Boy Blue. He is also the coauthor of the movie Runaway Train. He played Mr. Blue in the film Reservoir Dogs.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	xi
1.	No Heaven, No Hell	1
2.	State-Raised in California	13
3.	Among the Condemned	26
4.	Whores, Hearst, and Hollywood's Angel	55
5.	Night Train to San Quentin	92
6.	Tick Tock Turns the Clock, '52, '53, '54, '55	110
7.	Awaiting Parole	128
8.	The Land of Milk and Honey	146
9.	The Run	166
10.	The Shit Hits the Fan	203
11.	On the Lam	213
12.	Adjudged Criminally Insane	225
13.	Stuck in Folsom Prison	247
14.	Prison Race War	264
	Afterword: Paris, Jost Before Spring	295

Editorial Reviews

In this picaresque, harrowing, humorous yet deeply sad excursion through his dark-starred youth, Bunker—arguably the most renowned convict writer in America—serves as both participant and witness to the mid-century carnival of L.A. crime immortablized by James Ellroy...a thought-provoking and richly re-created tale of a career criminal.” —Publishers Weekly

“Education of a Felon is a masterful summation of the hard and brutal life of crime and prison from which Edward Bunker chiseled the virogour prose that marks him as America's foremost chronicler of prison life...” —The Los Angeles Times

“Bunker writes in straight-ahead, unadorned prose and, refreshingly, he refrains from excessive psychologizing and sentimentalizing...a rough-hewn memoir by a rough-hewn man.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher