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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1712 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 10, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America.

Working my way through Bret Easton Ellis works (have already read American Psycho and Imperial Bedrooms in the past). Finished The Informers, started and put aside Glamorama (insufferable main characters for the first few chapters and I can't imagine spending 400+ pages with them), and now about halfway through Lunar Park.

Did you read Less Than Zero before Imperial Bedrooms?

I can't say I found the characters in Glamorama any more insufferable than in any other of his novels.

Incidentally, the film adaptation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules_of_Attraction_(film)) of his second novel The Rules of Attraction doesn't get enough attention. Director Roger Avary wisely followed Mary Harron's lead in doing what she did with American Psycho: dialling down the more extreme content and dialling up the comedy. It's much funnier and less depressing than the source material (although still quite depressing).

The Rules of Attraction, incidentally, is set at the same college as Donna Tartt's The Secret History (much-beloved in these parts).

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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