<p>'THERE ARE MANY facets to Samuel Beckett's writing - humour, despair, love, poignancy, suffering - but for me there is one dominant characteristic, compassion, compassion for the human condition of existence.' So begins Eoin O'Brien's title essay, an observation that stands for the collection as it broadens out into convergent streams of essays on literature and medicine. Part One uses on the nature of friendship and connectivity, on the role ...