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Bookends

The talent and tragedy of Richard Pryor

Every page of David Henry and Joe Henry’s biography Furious Cool carries something either appalling or amusing

22 March 2014

9:00 AM

22 March 2014

9:00 AM

The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via crack pipe — but arranged in a biography their impact is renewed. So grotesque was his upbringing that an early encounter with a dead baby in a shoebox warrants but a single sentence in David Henry’s and Joe Henry’s addictive, frenzied book (Furious Cool, Algonquin Books,£17.99,

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