There were times during the stand-up routines Richard Pryor performed between his near-death, in June 1980 from self-immolation, and his actual death, in December 2005 from a heart attack, when he alluded to how high the odds for his success, indeed for his very survival, were stacked against him.
By that time, his audiences had come to know, though his scathing, revelatory life’s work, the troubles that Pryor had seen — and, to a considerable extent, caused for himself. Still, having such troubles thoroughly rendered by Scott Saul in his absorbing, incisive biography Becoming Richard Pryor helps us understand just how formidable those odds were. And how tribulation and turbulence combined to forge the ribald, intense and mercurial artist deemed by fellow funnyman Bob Newhart “the single most seminal comedic influence in the past 50 years.”
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