In turning his own experiences into comic material, how Richard Pryor made us howl, even though, truth be told, there was nothing funny about being born black and poor in pre-Civil Rights America, reared around a brothel, becoming a junkie, marital failures, setting oneself on fire.

Pryor was a master at turning a life inside out, exposing the interior and making the raw tissue something memorable. And funny.

But Pryor was more than a great entertainer.  He was also a provocateur. By poking fun at the downside of life, he made us consider the ridiculousness of so many things -- racism, poisoning one’s own body with chemicals, cheap sex, homelessness, addiction, poverty.

None of those things are funny either. But, Pryor had a way of making us laugh at them till we got cramps in our sides. Perhaps the key was the absurdity that had us rolling the aisles; the ridiculousness of those conditions in a country so rich and powerful and lucky.  He made us laugh to keep from crying.

His many proteges – Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, among others -- took note. Take, for example, Murphy’s famous routine in which he recalls, as a boy, flaunting a fresh ice cream cone before other kids who couldn’t afford one. 

“I got some ice cream, I got some ice cream, and you can’t have one, cause you’re on the welfare.”

The sing-song meanness wins a laugh, but the real guffaws come when little Eddie’s scoops plop to the ground in the middle of his taunting.  The last laugh always is best when it falls on the villain’s head.

For decades, Pryor gave us a chance to laugh with him, when it seemed we were laughing at him. At least some of his experiences were familiar to every one of us. With him guiding us through the emotional minefield, we could laugh at the foolishness of it all. He took some of the pain out of the thing.

Notably, that’s what Pryor said he was trying to do with his regular invocation of “nigger.” Like comedian Dick Gregory, he hoped to wear it out, to remove its stinger.

But, on a trip to Africa, he realized there were no niggers. He came back to the U.S. a changed man, realizing the word was not our word and that adopting it would not legitimize it. Pryor stopped using the word in his public performances. Repeating it would not make it better, he said.

He was right. The n-word has never been used so openly and widely as now –not only defiantly but proudly by some. But, let an unauthorized user toss it around and see for yourself if it makes any less trouble.

Call him then, a clown who gave the gift of laughter. But, call him also a prophet, a seer, a philosopher, a commentator. He knew the society he lived in because he took it apart and studied its innards, then served them up, if not deliciously, at least digestibly.

Even people turned off by the profanity and obscenity had to admit he was funny.  A case in point: In high school, I loaned a Pryor album to a friend.  Some time later, when I asked for it back, the friend told me the LP had been destroyed.

“I left it on the stereo and my father found it,” he explained. “He broke it in half.”

The friend looked sheepish at first. Then he broke into a grin.

“But he listened to both sides first.”