Mirthless

"Your sun has failed freshman English. I'm afraid he'll have to attend summer school," Tom's teacher said with a mirthless smile.

The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms: hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal...

In life, David Lodge was surprisingly mirthless. Luckily, his wife was a hoot [title]