Asperity

By Deane Barker • • tags: definition •

Definition: roughness, either of a physical surface or in manner

As a description of human behavior, this means to handle rigorously – to question, to interrogate, to be skeptical, to require proof, etc. An arresting and questioning police offer handles someone with asperity – your Mom doesn’t.

Why I Looked It Up

From Monsters:

I noticed a certain…asperity about so-called cancel culture when it came up in online recovery circles, especially the edgier, crankier online recovery circles inhabited by young former drug users, rather than middle-aged, middle-class former drinkers like myself.

Links from this – Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma June 17, 2023
This is a book that I probably read for the wrong reasons, and a book that I was ultimately unsatisfied with. But in the book’s defense, it could never succeed at what I wanted from it. This is a book that asks the question: What do we do with the art of monstrous men? That question above was...