Beckett's humor seems inseparable from dead seriousness. All his best jokes depend on a double-edged attitude toward the fact of human creation. In order to laugh, the joker partly identifies with a God's-eye point of view, detached and "scientifically" neutral; yet we know and the speaker knows how devastating the consequences of the joke are for the speaker. In Happy Days Winnie says, "How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones …?" The "sniggering with him" has just the right touch of sneaky and obsequious appreciation of His point of view, but the jokes are criticized with an alarming audacity as though Winnie were an all-licensed Fool, presuming on her occupational immunity from reprisal. To be born a sentient, struggling creature merely to suffer a certain amount of frustration and pain and then be no more—what...