Education of a Felon: A Memoir

“A masterful summation of the hard and brutal life of crime and prison from . . . America’s foremost chronicler of prison life.” —Los Angeles TimesIn 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 killer, from Hollywood’s steamy 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’s lead.“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“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 in and witness to the mid-century carnival of L.A. crime immortalized by James Ellroy . . . a thought-provoking and richly re-created tale of a career criminal.” —Publishers Weekly Read more