despond

Pickett survived but fell into a slough of despond and vengefulness.

Lawrence started building “Phantasma Gloria” around the turn of the millennium, when he was “languishing in the sea of despond for the unmet yearning to create something new and beautiful in the world.”

By the time Max shows up at Sondheim’s Manhattan townhouse in Turtle Bay for a New Yorker profile, Sondheim, a reluctant interviewee, is fighting a “slough of creative despond.”

“The Unfolding” suggests no solutions to this plight, but it offers irresistible reflection on how the audacity of hope got pushed off the rails and fell into the slough of despond.

Anything less, and it’s a descent into the slough of despond.