Education of a Felon

A Memoir

by Edward Bunker

The author of this memoir spent a good part of his life in California prisons; when he wasn't in jail, he was living among criminals and ex-cons in Southern California. His memoir lights up all these dark underworlds and tells of how he emerged from them to become a writer and actor.

Editions of Education of a Felon

	ISBN 9780312253158	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher St Martins Pr	Date 2000	Price $2.99	Used, Very Good
	ISBN 9780312280765	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Griffin	Date 2001	Price $3.99	New

Publisher Notes

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 Berkley chorus girl, Bunker was--at seventeen--the youngest inmate ever in St. 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 killer, from Hollywood's seamy underside 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 led.

Media Reviews

"[This] autobiography...is an account of a largely criminal career, which he relates without explanation, apology or regrets. At the same time, it is the heroic story of how a man saves his own life by turning himself into a writer. The two strands of narrative are fused. It is something to marvel at an applaud....What's most impressive about his autobiography is the near-nonchalance with which he bears witness to a life and times which were brutal and often intolerable....He writes well and truthfully about crime, but as an author he has paid his dues several times over...."

First Line

In March of 1933, Southern California suddenly began to rock and roll to a sound from deep within the ground. Bric-a-brac danced on mantels and shattered on floors. Windows cracked and cascaded onto sidewalks. Lathe-and-plaster houses screeched and bent this way and that, much like matchboxes. Brick buildings stood rigid until overwhelmed by the vibrations, then fell into a pile of rubble and a cloud of dust. The Long Beach Civic Auditorium collapsed, with many killed. I was later told that I was conceived at the moment of the earthquake and born on New Year's Eve, 1933, in Hollywood's Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Los Angeles was under a torrential deluge, with palm trees and houses floating down its canyons. When I was five, I heard my mother proclaim that the earthquake and storm were omens, for I was trouble from the start, beginning with colic.

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