Richard Pryor: A Literary Life

It makes sense that the general media would pause to note Richard Pryor’s parting. But why should English language arts teachers of all levels and college humanities and composition professors particularly note Pryor’s passing?

Richard Pryor was a literary artist strongly influenced by the Black Arts Movement. We might note this in terms of his style, even going as far to say that he was a Black Arts Movement comedian. Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle tribute to Pryor noted that after a crisis of consciousness causing him to leave the stage during a Las Vegas performance, Pryor moved to Berkeley. Specifically, he hung out with Ishmael Reed, notable Black Arts Movement luminary. I called Reed this morning to ask him about his relationship with Pryor.

“We tried to keep him out of Hollywood,” Reed said. “We made his comedy political. Pryor was a brilliant man even with his dark side. He was reading my book Yellow Back Radio Broke Down and later used the content as inspiration in co-writing Blazing Saddles with Mel Brooks.” New York Times reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt says Yellow Back Radio Broke Down “is a traditional revenge Western shot full of holes and stood on its head.” Reed’s remarks about Pryor’s work with his novel sounds like a potential writing or research assignment to me!

While Ishmael Reed has often been likened to Mark Twain, in 1998, "Richard Pryor was selected as the first recipient of the new Mark Twain Prize for Humor, because as a stand-up comic, writer, and actor, he struck a chord, and a nerve, with America, forcing it to look at large social questions of race and the more tragicomic aspects of the human condition. Though uncompromising in his wit, Pryor, like Twain, projects a generosity of spirit that unites us. They were both trenchant social critics who spoke the truth, however outrageous." (http://www.kennedycenter.org/programs/specialevents/marktwain/)

Richard Pryor even appeared on Sesame Street exploring emotions--happy, sad, scared and mad. Ironic?! Not really. Pryor put his life on stage and on screen at every turn. Pryor engaged in a deeper emotional exploration with kids in the film he co-produced with William Greaves, Bustin’ Loose. In the film, Pryor and co-star Cicely Tyson rescue a group of orphaned ELD kids with various ethnic and racial backgrounds in an Odessey from Philadelphia to a farm in Oregon on a broken down school bus. Like any good writer, artist, or teacher Pryor infused everything he did with his autobiography. Not his formal autobiography Pryor Convictions and other Life Sentences, written in the last few years, rather his autobiography in a thematic sense--immediate, lived, and uncensored.

Beyond the literary significance of Pryor’s life and art for English language arts educators, this passing or rather the reflection brought about by this passing, offers an opportunity to note the rich possibilities for using popular culture in the classroom as generative, inter-textual opportunities for inquiry bringing all of the language arts to bear in a formal academic presentation or production.