Customer Reviews

Education of a Felon: A Memoir

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a huge fan of Bunker's fictional work. _Dog Eat Dog_ is among the the most powerful works of fiction (irrespective of genre) I've ever read.

_Felon_ is relatively comprehensive, describing Bunker's troubled youth and adulthood in a series of increasingly tough institutions; it details his experiences as a student, parolee, fugitive, prisoner and author.

I had two minor bones to pick: in this day and age, a Father effectively abandoning his child to the arms of an institution seems nearly incomprehensible. Perhaps I didn't understand the true motivation, but wished there had been a more suitable explanation for his father's willingness to pawn off his increasingly troubled child to any home that would have him.

I also wished that the book had covered more of Bunker's life in the last twenty-odd years. There was no explanation of Bunker encountering Tarantino or similar events that would seem to be interesting and unique. The book effectively ends with Bunker still in prison, being notified that one of his novels has been accepted by Norton for publication.

Nonetheless, I devoured the entire book in a rush and would recommend it highly. It is a worthwhile description of a complex (if atypical) life.

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.

I was impressed by Mr. Bunker's writing skill. Apparently he is the only living author who knows the difference between "trusty" and "trustee".

Some of the writing is self-serving, which is to be expected, but the story as a whole is interesting, intelligent, and informational. I personally resented Mr. Bunker's constant insistence that he was a criminal because the "system" had made him one. He was a criminal because he failed to control his impulses--unless it was in his interest to do so. Even if his upbringing did not include such lessons, his experiences should have taught him that certain actions have certain consequences and it would be a good idea not to keep repeating them.

This was my first in-depth look into a life of crime that I thought was believable. All in all, Mr. Bunker is to be commended for giving readers the opportunity to see inside jails, prisons, reformatories, etc. and the people who inhabit them.

Edward Bunker's memoirs of his crimes and incarceration are fascinating and frustrating. Bunker always had a choice and he always opted for the self-destructive, violent world of the career criminal. I do not understand how some reviews can refer to his early years as "impoverished." His family was not poor and ever after his parent's divorce, his father sacrificed to send him to good private schools. Bunker was apparently one of those social anomolies whose lack of emotional restraint destined him to a life in which immediate gratification and the bravery of brutality were the primary values. He was bright, he informs of this over and over, and a voracious reader. But his intellect could not balance his inordinate anger. He doesn't delve into the deep roots of his rage,just a perfunctory mention of his parents's breakup. His morality is one of self justification and convenience. But he is as honest about himself as a man of limited insight can be and admits to be being a thug and a thief without apology. He is reckless and has a lust for life and adventure which captivates us with its sheer vitality. Bunker pays the price for his outlaw lifestyle, 18 years in the hellish world of California's toughest prisons. He survives incinerating passions and medival punishments through a combination of luck and tenacity. His literary talents are the only thing he has ever really committed to and worked at and, in the end, they reward him and us with the record of a strange and fascinating life.

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

This book is absolutely fantastic. I personally love to read ; but for the many who don't have the patience in this t.v. world, I recomend this book enthusiactically. This will be a book that can get the young interested in reading. I found it hard to put down. I am the kind of person that likes my intertainment raw and uncensored. This book is as exciting as any hard-core movie I've seen. It has it all ; from hookers to heroine , and the pool of the hearst castle to the prison hole. This book takes you into the criminal mind from a one time criminal to the succesful novelist of today. This book is highly intertaining.

What justice James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) did for a drug addiction and rehabilation experience, Edward Bunker exceeds with his memoir of life in jail and as a criminal but with undulated truthfulness. His prose and descriptive talents make the reader wonder how Bunker could have maintained such a delicate artfulness through years of violence and rebellion. His diction and clear interesting reproductive detailing of events, as far back as early childhood and up to the heinous race wars within San Quentin penitentiary of his late teen years, manifest and validate his true genius and talent as a brilliant writer. Bunker pushes the reader so close to the experience of jail and on the streets of Hollywood, that one almost wishes to spend a day inside the brutal prison walls, or with the heroin crazed call girls, pimps, thieves and drugs dealers of the late night. As horribly frightening and intense as the scenes are, unspeakable situations of misfortune and crime, Edwark Bunker will have you dreaming to see it, and do it all yourself.

This book was an excellent and interesting account of of Edward Bunker's life growing up in Los Angeles, and many different penal institutions. You can see many similarities between his real life, and his fictional work. Thge author points on many instances where prison was a different before race relations goverened friendship and loyalty behind the walls of prisons. My only criticism is thatthe author doesn't express remorse for the victim's of his crimes. He seems to express that being a thief is somehow more acceptable than violent criminals. However, the book was interesting, and hard to put down. It is a small window into a world I hope never to experience.

Another one of those books you better not pick up--because you won't be able to put it down. Bunker pulls no punches. I don't say it's as great as No Beast So Fierce--but does it have to be? Go for it. Get it. One or the other: No Beast... or Education of a Felon. Eddie Bunker has come a long way and deserves all the praise heaped on him. Not only are you a fine writer, brother, but an artist as well.

Being a fan of Bunker's fiction, I was disappointed in this memoir, not by the content, but by the execution. Certainly his life is an interesting one and an inspiration to writers--which makes it all the more a letdown by the repetition, the awkward phraseology, and for chrissake the TYPOS, that mar this work.

I won't try to get into the self-vindication aspect of the book, because it is, after all, a memoir and is advertised as such. Suffice it to say, however, that here's a man who has much to get off his chest.

If you've read all of Bunker, as I have, then you might find this book interesting. Far better, though, to read the novels which permitted him this bit of excess.