Bunker's DOG EAT DOG (1996) is a driving, relentless novel of
a gang of robbers bound for hell and taking a lot of folks
with them. It's a great read that builds to a powerful,
convincing conclusion. Remembering how much I enjoyed DOG
makes me wonder why I have yet to read his NO BEAST SO
FIERCE, which I bought at the same time at Murder One in
London. I did read his autobiography MR. BLUE and can
recommend it as well. It's a wonder he lived to entertain us
with his writing and acting.
Here is the LA Times obit, which has a few more details than
Variety:
Ex-Con Crime Novelist, Edward Bunker, Dies By Dennis McLellan
Times Staff Writer
July 24, 2005
Edward Bunker, the ex-con turned literary icon whose
hard-edged crime novels reflected the equally hard edges of a
life that included nearly two decades as an inmate in some of
the country's toughest prisons, has died. He was 71.
Bunker, a diabetic, died Tuesday at Providence St. Joseph
Medical Center in Burbank of complications after surgery to
improve the circulation in his legs, said a longtime friend,
screenwriter Robert Dellinger.
A West Hollywood resident, Bunker had spent most of his
rebellious and criminal youth in Los Angeles in a succession
of foster homes and reform schools. Often homeless and living
by his wits on the streets, he was 14 at the time of his
first criminal conviction, for burglary, which launched what
he later called his "full-scale war on authority."
Years later, a prison psychologist described Bunker the
habitual criminal as a "pitiful, tormented and tormenting
individual."
At 17, after stabbing a youth prison guard and later escaping
from Los Angeles County Jail, where he was serving a sentence
for another crime, Bunker became the youngest inmate at San
Quentin.
There - and at Folsom and other prisons during three terms
behind bars that totaled 18 years for robbery, check forgery
and other crimes - he learned to write.
In 1973, still in prison and having written five unpublished
novels and scores of unpublished short stories, he made his
literary debut with "No Beast So Fierce," a gripping novel
about a paroled thief whose attempt to reenter mainstream
society fails.
James Ellroy, a master of crime fiction, called the book,
firmly rooted in Bunker's experiences, "quite simply one of
the great crime novels of the past 30 years; perhaps the best
novel of the Los Angeles underworld ever written."
"No Beast So Fierce" was turned into the 1978 movie "Straight
Time," starring Dustin Hoffman. The script was co-written by
Bunker, who also played a small part in the film as a
criminal who meets Hoffman in a bar and plans a heist for
him.
After that, Bunker had parallel careers as an actor and
writer.
He wrote three more uncompromisingly realistic novels of
criminality and life behind bars, "The Animal Factory,"
"Little Boy Blue" and "Dog Eat Dog."
He also co-wrote the screenplay for "Runaway Train," a 1985
action drama about two escaped convicts played by Jon Voight
and Eric Roberts. And he co-wrote the adaptation of his novel
for "Animal Factory," Steve Buscemi's 2000 prison drama
starring Willem Dafoe and featuring Bunker in a small
role.
With his soft, raspy voice, a nose broken in innumerable
fights and a scar from a 1953 knife wound that ran from his
forehead to his lip, the compact and muscular ex-con was
ideal for typecasting as a big-screen thug.
Among the most notable of his nearly two dozen film roles was
that of the criminal Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's 1992
crime drama "Reservoir Dogs." Most recently, he played a
convict in the remake of "The Longest Yard."
Bunker's last published book is his 2000 memoir, "Education
of a Felon," which features an introduction by Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist William Styron, who praised the author
as "an artist with a unique and compelling voice."
Bunker's memoir, according to a Times review by Anthony Day,
"is a masterful summation of the hard and brutal life of
crime and prison from which Edward Bunker chiseled the
vigorous prose that marks him as America's foremost
chronicler of prison life."
"He's the most successful and respected prison writer in
America," said Dellinger, who met Bunker in 1973 at the
federal prison on Terminal Island, where Dellinger was the
inmate founder and teacher of the first creative writing
class sanctioned by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
At the time, Bunker was being held in an isolation cell while
awaiting trial in connection with a Beverly Hills bank
robbery.
"We've produced a lot of writers in prisons," Dellinger said,
"but Bunker wrote with energy and a muscular style that very
few people have, and his words just literally jump off the
page."
On what propelled him to become a writer, Bunker once told an
interviewer: "It has always been as if I carry chaos with me
the way others carry typhoid. My purpose in writing is to
transcend my existence by illuminating it."
An only child, Bunker was born in Hollywood in 1933. His
mother was a chorus girl in vaudeville and Busby Berkeley
musicals, and his alcoholic father was a stagehand and
occasional studio grip.
After his parents divorced when Bunker was 4, he spent the
next half a dozen years in and out of foster homes and
military academies, from which he frequently ran away.
"I didn't hear about love except in movies when I was a kid,"
Bunker once told Dellinger.
By 12, he was living in the first of a series of juvenile
reform schools.
While in reform schools, Bunker became a voracious reader; at
San Quentin he again found escape "from the misery of my
world" in books.
About a year after Bunker was sent to San Quentin, fellow
inmate Caryl Chessman, the notorious "Red Light Bandit,"
published his book "Cell 2455, Death Row."
"It was a revelation to me," Bunker later said, "that a
convict could write a book and have it published."
Although he had dropped out of school in seventh grade,
Bunker committed himself to becoming a writer.
Louise Wallis, the wife of producer Hal Wallis and a
prominent benefactor of the McKinley Home for Boys,
befriended Bunker. She sent him a portable typewriter, a
dictionary, a thesaurus and a subscription to the Sunday
edition of the New York Times, whose Book Review he
devoured.
He also subscribed to Writer's Digest and enrolled in a
correspondence course in freshman English from the University
of California, selling blood to pay for the postage.
Bunker never forgot the first line he wrote as a fledgling
writer: "Two teenage boys went to rob a liquor store."
"When I met him, he was at war with the world and society,
but he was loyal to his friends," Dellinger said. "If you
said I need you, he'd never say why. He'd say where or
when."
Dellinger, who helped Bunker in his transition from prison
life to the mainstream, said Bunker "changed his attitude
toward society and people after he got out and enjoyed
success."
Bunker's marriage to Jennifer Steele ended in divorce. He is
survived by their son, Brendan.
A memorial service will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 10 at
Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood.
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