Laugh Until It Hurts : The comic genius that coexisted with the self-destructive addict : PRYOR CONVICTIONS: And Other Life Sentences, <i> By Richard Pryor with Todd Gold (Pantheon Books: $23; 247 pp.)</i>

“Living with me ain’t no stroll on the beach,” Richard Pryor once quipped on stage. And in this entertaining, if sometimes unsettling, autobiography, he reaffirms that candid observation. “Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences,” written with Todd Gold, the Los Angeles bureau chief of People magazine, details the life of the talented and enigmatic comedian from his childhood years in Peoria, Ill., to his current struggle with multiple sclerosis, the degenerative disease that has virtually ended his career.

Pryor grew up in a truly bizarre environment. His mother worked as a waitress and prostitute; his father pimped and tended bar. His grandmother was a devout Christian who insisted that Richard regularly accompany her to church, but she also ran a whorehouse. Pryor did not emerge from the situation unscathed. “Family is a mixed blessing,” he writes. “You’re glad to have one, but it’s also like receiving a life sentence for a crime you didn’t commit.” And, as suggested by the book’s subtitle, much of this account is focused on the enduring effect this life sentence had on him.

In addition to the moral contradiction and violence that marked his childhood, he was a small, skinny child who, despite his quick wit, was an easy target for bullies and predators. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade. “By then, I’d given up on acquiring an education. After all, I’d been raped, expelled, abused, and victimized by the sting of racism.”

He joined the Army at age 18 and returned to Peoria after being discharged for nearly killing a white soldier in Germany during a racial attack.

In the early ‘60s Pryor, while working at menial jobs, was inspired by the comedy albums of Redd Foxx and the national prominence of Dick Gregory. After a brief stint in black clubs in the Midwest, he moved to New York. By the mid-1960s he was making regular appearances on the Merv Griffith and Ed Sullivan shows, and by the 1970s and early 1980s, he had abandoned the “white bread” comedy that initially catapulted him to fame and established himself as one of the most innovative, outrageous and, perhaps, beloved comedians America had ever seen.

During the same time, however, health and drug problems and a series of self-destructive incidents involving wives, lovers, the authorities, and the Hollywood community attracted nearly as much attention as did Pryor’s groundbreaking character-based humor. His routine focused on the prostitutes, pimps and hustlers who peopled his childhood.

Pryor recounts these episodes with striking candor. In fact, nearly all of his well-publicized contretemps are discussed, including his near-death by fire, his drug addiction, his obsessive pursuit of sex and his repeated involvement in domestic violence: “The sting of violence is like voodoo. A hex. A black spell. You’re possessed. Locked in a diabolic dance.”

Clearly, this a blunt, at times disturbing, book. And, wisely, the authors have interspersed the narrative with outtakes from Pryor’s comedy routines. Those insertions not only enhance the text and provide relief from a dark account of a life that, in Pryor’s own words, was often “lost in a haze of vodka, coke and anger,” but also remind us of the comic genius that coexisted with his self-destructive impulses.

Still, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of melancholy, of being let down, upon finishing “Pryor Convictions.” Not so much for what the book lacks--for Pryor seems to have presented a candid, even severe appraisal of his life--but rather because of what the breathtaking incisiveness and brilliance of his humor may have led us to expect of him off the stage. In that regard, perhaps it is better to let the man speak for himself: “I wasn’t Malcolm, Martin, or anybody else. I was just a drug-addicted, paranoid, frightened, lonely, sad, and frustrated comedian.”