Customer Reviews

Animal Factory

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Edward Bunker's "The Animal Factory" is not just a great novel about prison life, but a powerful critique of America's penal system. While the book is over 20 years old, it is more timely than ever, with the United States now holding more people in prison than any other country on the planet, both in terms of percentage of population and total numbers.

"Factory" chronicles how an intelligent, thoughtful, non-violent drug offender becomes a cold-blooded killer in little over a year. The San Quentin of Bunker's novel is an arena where anyone can die at any time, many times just hours before being released/paroled. It is a world where any slight to your character must be responded to with force (and oftentimes murder), or you are seen as weak and instant prey for prison rapists. Bunker's novel demonstrates that U.S. prisons are "factories" for super-predators, turning out far more dangerous criminals than those who enter.

While many of the book's arguments are not neccessarily original or ground-breaking, "Factory" condenses these themes brilliantly in a lean and intensely written narrative that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

"Factory" should be required reading by just about everyone, but especially those people who believe that the solution to crime is to pass more laws and build more prisons.

Also highly recommended: "You Are Going to Prison" by Jim Hogshire; "The Hot House" by Pete Earley.

An extremely realistic book about the life in San Quentin prison written by an ex prisoner who transfers his first hand experiences to the reader. Characters,prison environment and incidents are very well crafted and shaped. This book is strong enough to put the fear of God into even literally the most hardened reader.You will not even think of emptying your car's ashtray to the streets after reading this.

The Animal Factory is a great intro book for those who aren't familiar with the rest of Edward Bunker's stabs at fiction.

Though it drags on in places it is great narrative (though not the best) about life in jail. Edward Furlong starred in a film version directed by Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs) that does the book justice. So if your still unsure about reading this book, at least check out the movie. Mickey Rourke does a great job as a transvestite con.

FYI: Edward Bunker has a small part in Reservoir Dogs, I think he was Mr. Black.

A classic prison narrative. San Quentin, race riots in prison, the whole 60's to 70's violence and despair between races. When I read this book, I felt I could trust everything the author was bringing me, even though the insider view of prison life is cloaked in a tale of fiction. This book should be back in print.

The prisons portrayed in the media are usually the worst of the worst, like California's San Quentin. But the truth of what happens in these hell-holes is often distorted by Hollywood and popular culture. However, one book, "The Animal Factory" is spot on, probably because the author, Edward Bunker, spent eighteen years in and out of California's prison system.

Ron is a first-time offender, who, if he keeps a clean record, will only have to serve two years in San Quentin. If he doesn't stay out of trouble, he'll have to serve ten to life. But his young age and good looks make him an instant target for the mindless predators who inhabit this hell-on-earth.

Earl is a hard-core convict "so ravaged by moral confusion that he believed in nothing except personal loyalty." Earl comes to Ron's rescue because Earl needs a good friend more than anything else after deciding that he's getting too old to continue his destructive lifestyle.

The mentor teaches the protoge how to walk the tightrope of navigating between the convict rules and the prison authority rules, the two of which are at complete odds with each other. Violating the convict code can result in death and running afoul of the authorities can result in more time, which, in a place like San Quentin, is in itself a long, slow death.

San Quentin doesn't sound much different from the federal USP (United States Penitentiary) in Pollock, LA where I served five years. As Bunker says, a prison like this "...is a factory that turns out human animals. The chances are that whatever you get out of prison will be worse than what you send in..trying to make a decent human being out of someone by sending them to prison is like trying to make a Muslim by putting someone in a Trappist monastery."

Most prisons in this country are probably more similar to the one I'm in now, Marianna, a medium security federal prison. Most of the inmates are not so much a threat to society as they just can't seem to function in society. Marianna is more like a second-rate mental institution than a prison.

So for a more accurate portrayal of what day to day life is like in America's violent prisons, read The Animal Factory. It was written in 1977, and a movie version starring Willem Defoe and Edward Furlong was produced in 2000. I haven't seen the movie version, so I don't know if it's been Hollywood-ized or not.

Today also marks my eleventh year in prison. And I'm really tired. I'm tired of the daily struggle to not become an animal myself. The scary thing is that I can't be sure until I'm released back into a world I haven't seen since Bill Clinton was president, a world before iPhones and Facebook, a world before 9/11.

Right now, I live in a dimension where morals and values and ethics are grossly distorted. My companions for the last eleven years have been fellow bank robbers, drug dealers and murderers.

What effect is that having on me? But if it's true that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, then I should be fine.

David Allan Reeves
Author of "Running Away From Me"

Everyone,
This is a good book. However, I expected a little more from it. When I bought this book I was expecting to see a real look at prison society and life. It was a little too politically correct for me. I was expecting a gritty California prison novel, but I was greeted with a look at prison from the eyes of what seemed to be a middle class author and not a convict. It just didn't seem all that real. It seemed like I could have thought up the ideas myself. But, it was a really great read and I will buy more Edward Bunker books. His writing is addictive(I finished the book in less than 2 days), and I really want to read another to see how different or similar it will be. I would recomed this book for anyone who enjoys crime novels or prison novels, but I will read another one of Bunker's books before I tell people that he is worth reading more than once.

Animal Factory tells what prison is really like for inmates. It should be read by everybody who has a family member or friend in prison.

So it aint Solzhenitsyn, and there should probably be a law against making the comparison - which I'd be all for: can you imagine that first day inside?

"What you in for?"

"Comparing Eddie Bunker to Alexander Solzhenitsyn."

(Con whistles in admiration.)

Eddie Bunker was a rotten crook who pulled a bank job and got caught. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was locked up in a gulag under a despotic regime that didn't allow freedom of speech. (I'm generalising here, but stick with me, okay?) Bunker got his just desserts (some might say). Solzhenitsyn (again I'm generalising but) was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You might also think that you have to buy into what is quickly developing into a culture of admiration for nasty ne'er-do-wells. People (and by people I mean: publishing executives, film moguls, idiots) like to romanticise the villain. Just watch "McVicar" or "The Krays" or even "Chopper" (which, credit where credit's due, is a great movie). Read any of the chancy memoirs written by the gallery of supposedly lovable rogues (your Mad Frankie Frasers), who would like to give the impression that they only ever dispatched those who "deserved" it. Watch "Lock Stock & Two Mightily Over-rated Barrels." Read anything by Jake Arnott or James Hawes.

You don't, though. You don't have to buy into all that to like Eddie. (Although you'll have to get over the psychological obstacle of it: the publishers want you to think that Eddie is part and parcel of that whole thing. They include stupid quotes from stupid lad mags on the cover. They print the title in a font that aims to resemble the kind of print left by an ink-stained stamp. "The Animal Factory" has a grainy prison shot. Other Bunker novels have splashes of blood on them. You wonder why they didn't just go the whole hog. Write EDWARD BUNKER IS TOUGH or HE'S BEEN THERE, BABY, AND HE'S HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT!)

All of which does Edward Bunker a grave disservice. He's a great writer. Regardless of anything else - regardless of the fact of his having a past - he is a great writer. The Solzhenitsyn thing is apposite. There are, in fact, many similarities between this book and "...Ivan Denisovich". Bunker has a tremendous eye for details. It would be the easiest thing in the world to write an Elmore Leonard-lite prison novel revolving around authentic prison dialogue (authentic, yes, because Bunker has been there, I know). He doesn't do that, though. It would be easy to write and easier to sell.

What I think is this.

In "Waiting for Godot", Vladimir says "What do we do now?" and Estragon replies "Wait." I would imagine that that question - What do we do now? - gets asked a lot in prison. You've got time on your hands. You don't even have Godot to pretend to look forward to. Seems to me that Bunker read. His writing is informed with other books. "The Animal Factory" is as self-referentially canonical as T.S. Eliot would have any book be. I don't know the in's and out's of Bunker's life (and I'm quite happy with that), but I reckon he read a lot and started writing as a way to fill the otherwise empty hours.

It could have been that - without prison, without mixing in a hard-boiled, ugly crowd - he would never have wrote anything down. Could be any number of things. Whatever the reason, Bunker started writing and his hard, authentic voice is stripped of sensation and mightily persuasive. Bunker's characters are the flotsam spewed out of the machine that Sherman McCoy gets sucked into mid-way through "Bonfire of the Vanities" (mid-way through "Bonfire of the Vanities", just after Sherman gets arraigned, he emerges from the court house feeling dead, feeling chewed up and spat out but mostly dead - and that's the product that fills Bunker's books - all these lost misinformed souls in a different kind of gulag).