Richard Pryor: A Man and His Madness: A Biography

Greg Ioannou was the past president of the Freelance Editors' Association of Canada and a partner in The Editorial Centre, Toronto.

Richard Pryor is one of today’s most popular comedians. In recent years, he has successfully expanded his career into dramatic acting. Despite Pryor’s 20 hit records and more than 30 movies, his private life is more interesting than anything he has chosen to show us in public. He has lived, to use Jim Haskins’ clichéd phrase, “on life’s edge,” in the centre of a maelstrom of lawsuits concerning his numerous ex-wives and “exquasi-wives” (a dubious Haskins addition to the language), his alleged drug use, broken contracts, nonpayment of taxes, and so on and on.

Jim Haskins is a professor of English; his biography of Pryor is his seventh book on black American entertainers. In a highly readable style, he manages to show how the flamboyance of Pryor’s lifestyle has provided the material and the insights for his humour and, conversely, how his problems coping with the pressures of fame have inflamed his personal problems.

Unfortunately, the book is shallowly researched — probably more the result of the apparent unwillingness of Pryor and those close to him to be interviewed by Haskins. Too often, instead of concrete information we are left with the viewpoints of peripheral characters on Haskins’ conjectures or opinions.