Try again. Fail again. Fail better

摘要

"Nothing is funnier than unhappi-ness," says Nell, an immobile, daffy dustbin-dweller, in Samuel Beckett's play "Endgame". For Beckett, an Irish playwright born 100 years ago who won the Nobel prize in literature in 1969, adversity and decrepitude were a rich source of humour. The frequently heard charge, that his stuff is morbid and joyless, is altogether wide of the mark.