Worthless Word for the Day

[teapeebubbles]

the worthless word for the day is: laocoon

[after Laocoon, ancient Greek priest of Apollo
who is portrayed in a 1st century B.C. sculpture
in a heroic struggle against two giant serpents]
/lay AK oh wan/ one that struggles heroically
with crushing or baffling difficulties

"Hardy wrote as he pleased, just as any popular
novelist does, quite unaware of the particular
problems of his art, and yet it is Hardy who gives
the impression of being cramped, of being forced
into melodramatic laocoon attitudes, so that we
begin to appreciate his novels only for the
passages where the poet subdues the novelist."
- Graham Greene, The Lesson of the Master