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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
Ex-con and man of letters Edward Bunker discusses his new memoir, "Education of a Felon," and life as an upstanding citizen.
Apr 24, 2000 | Edward Bunker has a face like an ax, a voice like a buzz saw and the watery blue eyes of a saint. Standing in the middle of an office garage behind his picture-perfect home in L.A.'s tony Hancock Park, he lights a half-smoked cigar for the umpteenth time -- the matches burning down close to his fingers before they fire up the cherry. And then leans back on his heels as he answers my question: "Is there any similarity between a criminal and an artist?"
"Both tend to have a sociopathic deviancy in their attitudes," he says, sucking on the stogie. "They don't see things like the average citizen. So to that extent, there is. Dustin even made that comment somewhere."
Bunker's referring to Dustin Hoffman, who played a version of Bunker in the 1978 Ulu Grosbard film "Straight Time." The movie was based on Bunker's first published novel, "No Beast So Fierce." Its protagonist Max Dembo is one of Bunker's alter egos.
Bunker's in the film as well, playing a different version of himself -- an underworld figure who meets Hoffman in a dark bar and plans a heist for him. According to Bunker's recently published memoir, "Education of a Felon," it's a role Bunker fleshed out in the late '50s when he spent most of his time concocting schemes for other criminals to enact.
"I was really good in that scene, man," says Bunker with a wicked little smile. "When they wrapped for the day, the whole cast applauded me. I've been in 20 or 30 movies since and never seen a cast do that. At the time, I had only been out of prison for six or seven months."
Bunker's bio offers an almost seamless melding of life and art. In brutal, uncompromising novels such as "Dog Eat Dog," "Little Boy Blue," "No Beast So Fierce" and "Animal Factor" (the subject of an upcoming Steve Buscemi-directed film starring Bunker and Willem Dafoe), the 66-year-old author has mined a wealth of experiences from his years in the underworld, on the lam and in the joint.
The scion of a broken home, he was in and out of juvenile detention facilities throughout his childhood -- mainly for truancy, thievery and escaping, which he did on several occasions.
Then, when he was 17, he drew a stint in San Quentin state prison, earning him the distinction of being the youngest person incarcerated there. It was the first of three terms, eventually totaling 18 years. Whenever he was out, L.A.'s street life lured him into a career of robbery, fraud and various other offenses, and soon enough, he'd be back in the joint.
But San Quentin was, strangely enough, the place where Bunker began to transform himself into the American Jean Genet, and it's where he did most of his serious reading.
"My library day was Saturday," he writes in "Education of a Felon." "We were allowed to have five books checked out at one time. I tried to read all five in seven nights, so I could get five more. I was no speed-reader, but I had six hours every night and half an hour in the morning. Sometimes if I was entranced, as with [Jack London's] 'The Sea Wolf,' I came back to the cell after breakfast."
Prison is also where he had the epiphany that he wanted to be a writer -- his inspiration coming from another cell-bound ink-slinger, Caryl Chessman, aka "The Red Light Bandit," whose death-row memoir made him a cause celebre in the '50s.
Bunker was in isolation, near Chessman on death row when Chessman, knowing Bunker liked to read, sent him over a copy of Argosy magazine via a guard. The mag had excerpted the first chapter of Chessman's "Cell 2455, Death Row," and after Bunker read it, he thought, "Why not me?"
"More than inspiration, it was revelation," Bunker states, pausing before a framed poster from the 1985 film "Runaway Train," for which Bunker co-wrote the screenplay. "It's what I wanted to do, and it was something I could do no matter what my condition. I didn't have any idea it would take 17 years and six books to get published."
Bunker's literary ambition rescued him from the cycle of recidivism, and he's been out of jail for 25 years. Not only does he enjoy the fruits of bourgeois affluence -- a charming, attractive wife, a well-mannered 6-year-old son, a house right out of Better Homes and Gardens and two sports cars (a brand new BMW and a classic '78 Alfa-Romeo); in addition, Bunker's the recipient of high literary praise from the likes of James Ellroy, who calls him "a true original of American letters." And William Styron writes in the introduction to Bunker's memoir that Bunker is "one of a small handful of American writers who have created authentic literature out of their experiences as criminals and prisoners."
