Education of a Felon

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 ReviewIn 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