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Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality
In a cultural moment when panics over the stories we tell are at their peak, Dangerous Fictions shows us exactly what we're fighting about and why
Fictional stories have long been imagined to hold an uncanny power over hearts and minds, especially those of young people. These days, everybody frets about according to the National Coalition Against Censorship, the current wave of book bans is the worst since the 1980s, and our cultural debates are consumed by questions about the politics and moral responsibility of storytelling. Can readers and viewers, at any age, be harmed by what they read and see?
In Dangerous Fictions Lyta Gold traces arguments both historical and contemporary that have labeled fiction as dark, immoral, frightening, or poisonous; within each she asks, how “dangerous” is fiction, really? And what about it provokes waves of moral panic and even censorship?
Fiction is the story of other that, more than anything else, is what makes it dangerous. From YA readers condemning faults in representation, to debates over the moral worth of controversial works like Lolita, to conservative calls to ban literature that might make white readers feel guilty about American history, people of all political stripes clearly believe stories hold considerable political power.
Dangerous Fictions incisively posits that a panic about art is largely a panic about power in disguise. Gold argues that we’ve been having versions of these same fights over fiction for centuries, and that by exposing fiction as a site of social danger, a battleground of immediate public concern, we can see what each side really the right to shape the future of a world deeply in flux, along with an entertaining sideshow to distract from more pressing material concerns about money, access, and the hard work of politics.
From novels about people driven insane by reading novels to “copaganda” TV shows that impact how viewers regard the police, Gold uses her signature wit, research, and fearless commentary to point readers towards a more substantial fiction may be dangerous to us, but aren’t we also dangerous to it?
Fictional stories have long been imagined to hold an uncanny power over hearts and minds, especially those of young people. These days, everybody frets about according to the National Coalition Against Censorship, the current wave of book bans is the worst since the 1980s, and our cultural debates are consumed by questions about the politics and moral responsibility of storytelling. Can readers and viewers, at any age, be harmed by what they read and see?
In Dangerous Fictions Lyta Gold traces arguments both historical and contemporary that have labeled fiction as dark, immoral, frightening, or poisonous; within each she asks, how “dangerous” is fiction, really? And what about it provokes waves of moral panic and even censorship?
Fiction is the story of other that, more than anything else, is what makes it dangerous. From YA readers condemning faults in representation, to debates over the moral worth of controversial works like Lolita, to conservative calls to ban literature that might make white readers feel guilty about American history, people of all political stripes clearly believe stories hold considerable political power.
Dangerous Fictions incisively posits that a panic about art is largely a panic about power in disguise. Gold argues that we’ve been having versions of these same fights over fiction for centuries, and that by exposing fiction as a site of social danger, a battleground of immediate public concern, we can see what each side really the right to shape the future of a world deeply in flux, along with an entertaining sideshow to distract from more pressing material concerns about money, access, and the hard work of politics.
From novels about people driven insane by reading novels to “copaganda” TV shows that impact how viewers regard the police, Gold uses her signature wit, research, and fearless commentary to point readers towards a more substantial fiction may be dangerous to us, but aren’t we also dangerous to it?
1 pages, Audio CD
First published October 29, 2024
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December 30, 2024so many parts of this book put into words what i've felt about books and the book community, particularly with questioning the ability of fiction to teach empathy (and how that’s often placed upon authors of color), and the expectation for art to be “useful” and for books to only be valuable if they make you more “intelligent”. it was also interesting to learn about the CIA’s influence on american fiction and historical examples of society clutching their pearls at books. will definitely check out some of the other materials sourced to dive further.
August 8, 2025
I picked up this book thinking it would be about book bans, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it goes much deeper. This book is full of musings about the nature of fiction, the ways fictional stories have been portrayed as dangerous over the years, and the degree to which the fictional media we consume actually influences our viewpoints and behaviour. It touches on examples ranging from the positive portrayal of cops on TV to the moral panic over Dungeons and Dragons to the influence the CIA had on mid century American fiction.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys thinking deeply about the media we consume. English majors, this one’s totally for you!
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys thinking deeply about the media we consume. English majors, this one’s totally for you!
October 24, 2024
Thank you to Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review
Yeah… no. While I want to support an essay collection analyzing reasons and examples of the ubiquitous desire to censor and ban fiction, DANGEROUS FICTIONS was pretty incohesive and superficially argued.
It started off promising, with Gold explaining in clear language that fear of fiction (moreso than of nonfiction) remains a mainstay of a society that is ruled by fear of the Other. I even found myself laughing in agreement at some of her snarky turns of phrase, such as calling the comings and goings of book bans “some kind of hysterical cicada,” or Greek philosophers criticizing writers of epics “for portraying the gods as murderous, adulterous assholes”.
But beyond that, the essays don’t go much deeper. This reads like the sort of argument you’d find on a Twitter thread: passages sound nice in isolation, but when zoomed out, lack sufficient research and evidence to back them up. Gold makes liberal use of the, well, common liberal thought-terminating cliches about conservatives (e.g. “The left-wing book cancelers are trying to address real and complicated concerns; the right-wing book banners simply love power and hate time”). On social media, these are the kind of statements that would get shared thousands of times; in a book, it acts like an excuse for Gold to not back up her theses with clear evidence. Gold often uses a sample size of one to support her arguments, which makes it very easy to poke holes through her declarations.
The Tweet-like nature of her writing also leads to essays of limited cohesiveness. In just Chapter One, titled “Get a Load of These Crazy Broads” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), Gold covers, in no particular order: conservative book bans on the “woke” agenda, conservative white parents’ inability to let their children feel even one moment of racial discomfort or guilt, book “cancel culture” by liberal readers, authors of color trying to police and cancel other authors of color, historical calls to ban plays that depicted woman in a too “revolutionary” manner, morality tales, representation, transphobia, the whiteness of the publishing industry, the fairly muted attempts to canonical white male authors, and more. If you’re confused about what point she is trying to make by attempting (and failing) to tie all of these examples together… you’re not alone. After a point it felt like Gold was introducing a completely new topic with every paragraph, and only occasionally circling back to points and examples she’d made earlier.
There are some good points scattered throughout–I especially appreciated a point Gold made about how books weren’t depicting reality so much as they were depicting prescriptive norms, i.e. how people should think, feel, and act–but the way the book is organized doesn’t support these nuggets of good insight. Rather, they get buried under an avalanche of disjointed Twitter-level analyses and sound bites.
Yeah… no. While I want to support an essay collection analyzing reasons and examples of the ubiquitous desire to censor and ban fiction, DANGEROUS FICTIONS was pretty incohesive and superficially argued.
It started off promising, with Gold explaining in clear language that fear of fiction (moreso than of nonfiction) remains a mainstay of a society that is ruled by fear of the Other. I even found myself laughing in agreement at some of her snarky turns of phrase, such as calling the comings and goings of book bans “some kind of hysterical cicada,” or Greek philosophers criticizing writers of epics “for portraying the gods as murderous, adulterous assholes”.
But beyond that, the essays don’t go much deeper. This reads like the sort of argument you’d find on a Twitter thread: passages sound nice in isolation, but when zoomed out, lack sufficient research and evidence to back them up. Gold makes liberal use of the, well, common liberal thought-terminating cliches about conservatives (e.g. “The left-wing book cancelers are trying to address real and complicated concerns; the right-wing book banners simply love power and hate time”). On social media, these are the kind of statements that would get shared thousands of times; in a book, it acts like an excuse for Gold to not back up her theses with clear evidence. Gold often uses a sample size of one to support her arguments, which makes it very easy to poke holes through her declarations.
The Tweet-like nature of her writing also leads to essays of limited cohesiveness. In just Chapter One, titled “Get a Load of These Crazy Broads” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), Gold covers, in no particular order: conservative book bans on the “woke” agenda, conservative white parents’ inability to let their children feel even one moment of racial discomfort or guilt, book “cancel culture” by liberal readers, authors of color trying to police and cancel other authors of color, historical calls to ban plays that depicted woman in a too “revolutionary” manner, morality tales, representation, transphobia, the whiteness of the publishing industry, the fairly muted attempts to canonical white male authors, and more. If you’re confused about what point she is trying to make by attempting (and failing) to tie all of these examples together… you’re not alone. After a point it felt like Gold was introducing a completely new topic with every paragraph, and only occasionally circling back to points and examples she’d made earlier.
There are some good points scattered throughout–I especially appreciated a point Gold made about how books weren’t depicting reality so much as they were depicting prescriptive norms, i.e. how people should think, feel, and act–but the way the book is organized doesn’t support these nuggets of good insight. Rather, they get buried under an avalanche of disjointed Twitter-level analyses and sound bites.
December 22, 2024
Review to come soon, tonight I need to cry because (as a writer myself) that last chapter gutted me.
So here's the full review:
I loved Lyta Gold's deep dive into moral panics leading to book banning, the analysis of how the pillars of modern "high-brow" literature was shaped by the CIA during the Cold War, the reveal of how fiction amplifies what we already believe and the actual purpose of art--not its capitalistic "usefulness." I loved her sense of humor, her courage to acknowledge the venomous nature of online discourse propagated among writers online--leading to harassment campaigns and cancellations primarily of women and POC creators--and her cutting review of the uselessness, low quality and hypocrisy of so called "progressive" art (she focused mostly on movies and TV shows but touched on a few novels as well) made by mega corporations who perpetuate the false myth of "quality begets money". The indictment of the capitalist model of consuming art is excellent. As an emerging writer I've often found the restraints imposed by MFA-educated writers and their educators to be suffocating and excluding new stories unless they catered to a very narrow niche of (still mostly male) "high" critics. A call to action is much needed for artists, especially writers, who dog themselves online while fighting for scraps, rather than unionizing and taking collective action. As creators we have internalized the idea that value is denoted by money or narrow critical response, and are often eagerly participating in policing each. Even the most progressive creators have blind spots and those expand into supermassive black holes when a creator born or raised outside of US/Canada tells a story inspired by their own background which is misunderstood as an analogy to real North-American events--and the resulting ill-informed criticisms can be career stifling.
This is where Gold, in my opinion, also exposed her own glaring blind spot. As a writer born in a communist country, I have grown tired of Western left-wing literati explaining the virtues and values of the Marxist revolution. We (the former communists) have lived through it. And when we try to warn people that it's not all that it's built up to be, we are condescendingly patted on the head, or ignored. Our voices are valuable when we agree with the people fighting against book-bans and trying to promote own-voices and diversity; the second we try to ring the alarm that communism is just another utopia we are silenced or ignored. If you want to advance the Marxist revolution, take a trip to North Korea first. Pick up a novel by Solzhenitsyn (who heavily criticized both communism and capitalism). And stop talking over people with direct experience of living under a communist totalitarian regime and its aftermath. The chapter arguing for a better Marxist novel was so poorly researched in respect to socialist art as to be infuriating and almost made me abandon the book. Socialist Realism was the only cultural doctrine mentioned. Maybe in the USSR that was the norm. But the rest of the countries behind the Iron Curtain diversified away from this doctrine into surrealist forms of art--the fever dream was the only way for artists to put forward their work criticizing the political regime without being imprisoned by the rulers. It's interesting how the silencing and imprisonment of artists the regimes saw as dangerous is not truly mentioned when the Marxist revolution is desired.
I also think the analysis of the crime-fiction genre was a bit simplified. The author's assumptions as to why we seek crime fiction where not complete in my opinion. I think we also seek these stories because the human brain is wired to recognize patterns and hungry to find cause and effect--and crime fiction offers that in spades. This is probably why Lyta Gold stayed away from discussing cozy murder mysteries. I would have been curious to hear her opinion on the novel "Lavender House" which in my opinion re-claims and appropriates the noir crime-procedural to deliver a satisfying murder mystery where the formally closeted gay cop becomes the MC who defends his queer community from the evil straight murderer; the deviant is the formal 'vulnerable' victim of white male lead procedural, the evil is the homophobia and obstinate conviction in 'Christian' morals. I do believe we can write ethical crime fiction. But then again, I admit I am biased here--as I dabble in the genre myself.
After a sagging middle, the book got me by the throat again when Lyta Gold fought against the "usefulness" of art. At times I felt hopeless; and indeed we're not in a good spot. With AI coming for most creators, with a capitalist market obsessed with profit only and not interested at all in quality, it feels hard to see a way where being a writer, an artist, will be at all viable for anyone other than the rich and famous. The pressure to produce, produce, produce is indeed leading to lower quality art. For crime-writers for e.g. the market expects one novel per year at least, which has lead to me reliable enjoying only the first 2-3 books in a series (usually the author has more time to write the first 2) and then a free fall into trash from which the artist usually never recovers (but heck if the books don't sell because sometimes readers keep hoping a miracle will happen). And yet...I can't give it up. I know I'm doomed and I don't want to, cannot stop writing. And here Lyta Gold struck the most painful nerve for me: "The act of creation is what you want to do with your life, and the only thing you want to do. That’s why you do it no matter what, even though it doesn’t pay enough to live, and even though the world you live in may be ending(...) Creative people will create art, even if it sucks: the need to make art is something like a sickness, a curse, a blessing. (...) Beyond questions of good, or useful, or helpful, or healthy, creating art is necessary for the artist: an expression of indefatigable being." I never felt more defeated, more hopeless, and more understood in my life.
Do I recommend "Dangerous Fictions?" Absolutely, even though it's not a perfect book and suffers from its own blind spots. It should be a starting point for conversations about how much fiction can influence our opinions (and I think it does more than the author admits, although definitely not as much as some publications have claimed). But most importantly I hope it opens 'dangerous' conversations about what we can do as creators. As long as we fight each other in the hope for righteous recognition we are easy pickings for a system that has little interest in our actual creation. However, the consumers of our work matter; they care. And creators matter; creators care. "We’re transformed by great writing, not beyond our own powers and capabilities but into them. Writing doesn’t fix us or save us or make us better people: it just makes us more of what we already are, and what we want to become."
So here's the full review:
I loved Lyta Gold's deep dive into moral panics leading to book banning, the analysis of how the pillars of modern "high-brow" literature was shaped by the CIA during the Cold War, the reveal of how fiction amplifies what we already believe and the actual purpose of art--not its capitalistic "usefulness." I loved her sense of humor, her courage to acknowledge the venomous nature of online discourse propagated among writers online--leading to harassment campaigns and cancellations primarily of women and POC creators--and her cutting review of the uselessness, low quality and hypocrisy of so called "progressive" art (she focused mostly on movies and TV shows but touched on a few novels as well) made by mega corporations who perpetuate the false myth of "quality begets money". The indictment of the capitalist model of consuming art is excellent. As an emerging writer I've often found the restraints imposed by MFA-educated writers and their educators to be suffocating and excluding new stories unless they catered to a very narrow niche of (still mostly male) "high" critics. A call to action is much needed for artists, especially writers, who dog themselves online while fighting for scraps, rather than unionizing and taking collective action. As creators we have internalized the idea that value is denoted by money or narrow critical response, and are often eagerly participating in policing each. Even the most progressive creators have blind spots and those expand into supermassive black holes when a creator born or raised outside of US/Canada tells a story inspired by their own background which is misunderstood as an analogy to real North-American events--and the resulting ill-informed criticisms can be career stifling.
This is where Gold, in my opinion, also exposed her own glaring blind spot. As a writer born in a communist country, I have grown tired of Western left-wing literati explaining the virtues and values of the Marxist revolution. We (the former communists) have lived through it. And when we try to warn people that it's not all that it's built up to be, we are condescendingly patted on the head, or ignored. Our voices are valuable when we agree with the people fighting against book-bans and trying to promote own-voices and diversity; the second we try to ring the alarm that communism is just another utopia we are silenced or ignored. If you want to advance the Marxist revolution, take a trip to North Korea first. Pick up a novel by Solzhenitsyn (who heavily criticized both communism and capitalism). And stop talking over people with direct experience of living under a communist totalitarian regime and its aftermath. The chapter arguing for a better Marxist novel was so poorly researched in respect to socialist art as to be infuriating and almost made me abandon the book. Socialist Realism was the only cultural doctrine mentioned. Maybe in the USSR that was the norm. But the rest of the countries behind the Iron Curtain diversified away from this doctrine into surrealist forms of art--the fever dream was the only way for artists to put forward their work criticizing the political regime without being imprisoned by the rulers. It's interesting how the silencing and imprisonment of artists the regimes saw as dangerous is not truly mentioned when the Marxist revolution is desired.
I also think the analysis of the crime-fiction genre was a bit simplified. The author's assumptions as to why we seek crime fiction where not complete in my opinion. I think we also seek these stories because the human brain is wired to recognize patterns and hungry to find cause and effect--and crime fiction offers that in spades. This is probably why Lyta Gold stayed away from discussing cozy murder mysteries. I would have been curious to hear her opinion on the novel "Lavender House" which in my opinion re-claims and appropriates the noir crime-procedural to deliver a satisfying murder mystery where the formally closeted gay cop becomes the MC who defends his queer community from the evil straight murderer; the deviant is the formal 'vulnerable' victim of white male lead procedural, the evil is the homophobia and obstinate conviction in 'Christian' morals. I do believe we can write ethical crime fiction. But then again, I admit I am biased here--as I dabble in the genre myself.
After a sagging middle, the book got me by the throat again when Lyta Gold fought against the "usefulness" of art. At times I felt hopeless; and indeed we're not in a good spot. With AI coming for most creators, with a capitalist market obsessed with profit only and not interested at all in quality, it feels hard to see a way where being a writer, an artist, will be at all viable for anyone other than the rich and famous. The pressure to produce, produce, produce is indeed leading to lower quality art. For crime-writers for e.g. the market expects one novel per year at least, which has lead to me reliable enjoying only the first 2-3 books in a series (usually the author has more time to write the first 2) and then a free fall into trash from which the artist usually never recovers (but heck if the books don't sell because sometimes readers keep hoping a miracle will happen). And yet...I can't give it up. I know I'm doomed and I don't want to, cannot stop writing. And here Lyta Gold struck the most painful nerve for me: "The act of creation is what you want to do with your life, and the only thing you want to do. That’s why you do it no matter what, even though it doesn’t pay enough to live, and even though the world you live in may be ending(...) Creative people will create art, even if it sucks: the need to make art is something like a sickness, a curse, a blessing. (...) Beyond questions of good, or useful, or helpful, or healthy, creating art is necessary for the artist: an expression of indefatigable being." I never felt more defeated, more hopeless, and more understood in my life.
Do I recommend "Dangerous Fictions?" Absolutely, even though it's not a perfect book and suffers from its own blind spots. It should be a starting point for conversations about how much fiction can influence our opinions (and I think it does more than the author admits, although definitely not as much as some publications have claimed). But most importantly I hope it opens 'dangerous' conversations about what we can do as creators. As long as we fight each other in the hope for righteous recognition we are easy pickings for a system that has little interest in our actual creation. However, the consumers of our work matter; they care. And creators matter; creators care. "We’re transformed by great writing, not beyond our own powers and capabilities but into them. Writing doesn’t fix us or save us or make us better people: it just makes us more of what we already are, and what we want to become."
May 24, 2025
I think that’s important to keep in mind as we turn to the final question about fiction, which is what is to be done about it, and how much can we expect of art and entertainment to fix our problems with reality, especially under our current economic and political system. Some of our problems may in fact be unsolvable; reality has always been disappointingly unscripted. But it’s still the case that our current set of political problems is a very frightening one, and the level of fear and uncertainty about the future is much more extreme than usual, especially as—thanks to rising fascism and climate change—we face the shivering breakdown of the real. It’s easy to suggest that if people just consumed better and more accurate narratives about reality, they’d be more equipped to handle it. But it’s less easy to determine what those healthy fictional narratives are, and what problems we can realistically expect them to solve for us.
So this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, so much so that I ordered it for my school library. It was surprisingly a bit different than I expected, especially when it got quite philosophical, which I really appreciated. The main argument, art for art's sake is one that has been beaten for centuries but I hadn't seen it explained with this perspective before, which gave me a lot of much needed insight on the topic (I mean, seriously that chapter with the CIA...wtf).
However, sadly, no scratch that, very upsettingly while the ideas presented were immaculate (and extremely important in this contemporary political era), I really hated it structurally. What actually makes it such a bummer is that this book is extremely unique in the subject matter, since, even as a literature student I never see fiction that we experience in our day to day lives given much merit, so it's vital we talk about these things but genuinely parsing throught these essays was a chore and it didn't need to be. I felt like Gold jumped from topic to topic without much regard for transitions, and it left everything up in the air. Or more like chewing up 5 different types of bubblegum at once (does that count as a food metaphor?). Right when she said something important, something worth mulling over a bit, she would switch to another topic. Instead of essays, it felt more like reading a commulation of paragraphs with only mere traces of each other to connect them, and only if you squint a bit. It's just really difficult, when reading, to meld all these ideas together in a way in which they all posit their meaning to the fullest. Although I can look past this in fiction, with nonfiction I think this is the most important bit, not the ideas presented or how much the reader agrees with them but instead how well the author can put them through to the reader. Again, since my biggest gripe is technical, I would still recommend checking it out, even if only for Chapter 4 and Chapter 8, which I think were the most successful in being succinct.
So this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, so much so that I ordered it for my school library. It was surprisingly a bit different than I expected, especially when it got quite philosophical, which I really appreciated. The main argument, art for art's sake is one that has been beaten for centuries but I hadn't seen it explained with this perspective before, which gave me a lot of much needed insight on the topic (I mean, seriously that chapter with the CIA...wtf).
However, sadly, no scratch that, very upsettingly while the ideas presented were immaculate (and extremely important in this contemporary political era), I really hated it structurally. What actually makes it such a bummer is that this book is extremely unique in the subject matter, since, even as a literature student I never see fiction that we experience in our day to day lives given much merit, so it's vital we talk about these things but genuinely parsing throught these essays was a chore and it didn't need to be. I felt like Gold jumped from topic to topic without much regard for transitions, and it left everything up in the air. Or more like chewing up 5 different types of bubblegum at once (does that count as a food metaphor?). Right when she said something important, something worth mulling over a bit, she would switch to another topic. Instead of essays, it felt more like reading a commulation of paragraphs with only mere traces of each other to connect them, and only if you squint a bit. It's just really difficult, when reading, to meld all these ideas together in a way in which they all posit their meaning to the fullest. Although I can look past this in fiction, with nonfiction I think this is the most important bit, not the ideas presented or how much the reader agrees with them but instead how well the author can put them through to the reader. Again, since my biggest gripe is technical, I would still recommend checking it out, even if only for Chapter 4 and Chapter 8, which I think were the most successful in being succinct.
December 14, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed this critical inquiry into how narrative fiction shapes, and is shaped by, reality. Especially the relationship between speculative fiction and political action. I suppose part of this might be the fact that some of the favorite material we covered this semester for my master's in library and information studies was centered on narrative inquiry and I was using this methodology in my write up of some participatory action research I was involved in centered around labor organizing. The other big project I was working on this semester was on how libraries approach environmental sustainability. This book managed to check a lot of boxes for me. I even pulled a quote from it to use in the labor organizing project. Which I suppose is still talking about it using a value-in-use perspective, but regardless, one of the reasons I found this book valuable was because it made me pause and consider my relationship to the things people create and check my initial reaction to works. I know I've left plenty of reviews on here where I've been a leftist scold and I don't think that's necessarily a problem as long as that doesn't become the point. If you try to find offense in everything, you will. That doesn't mean there isn't plenty of shit to get offended by out there, but for the most part it's related to systemic and structural issues. It's worth considering what you are reacting to and why, and this book did a good job reminding me of that.
March 13, 2025
I was under the impression this book was about book banning, and so I thought it would be a little like taking coals to Newcastle, but I thought I'd give it a try.
I'm glad I did. It's much more.
If I had read the jacket copy more carefully I would have realized it had a broader range. It's dealing with the purpose of fiction, its use in the world, and whether it has a political effect or not. Or should.
The author has a wicked sense of humor. When it looks like she's going to bog down in detail she throws in a zinger that makes you laugh. It reminds me of an intense conversation at a bar where someone gets very serious, and then cracks a joke. I bet Lyta Gold is great at cocktail parties.
Anyhow, she gives a lot of context for the nature of repressing fiction, whether written or viewed (she's not really dealing with music here, but spends a fair amount of time on movies and TV shows, since that's her main consumption that's not reading).
Right away she establishes that there will be no false equivalencies: The intermittent and unorganized cancellations from the political left can't hold a candle to the organized, nationally coordinated efforts on the right to ban books, troll authors, and silence video gamers. She makes it clear that it's not really about the fiction (or 'content' as we now call it), but power.
I expect those on the political right won't read this book, but those on the left should, if only to get some balance on how the left is screwing up its response (and how it might be done more effectively).
I'm glad I did. It's much more.
If I had read the jacket copy more carefully I would have realized it had a broader range. It's dealing with the purpose of fiction, its use in the world, and whether it has a political effect or not. Or should.
The author has a wicked sense of humor. When it looks like she's going to bog down in detail she throws in a zinger that makes you laugh. It reminds me of an intense conversation at a bar where someone gets very serious, and then cracks a joke. I bet Lyta Gold is great at cocktail parties.
Anyhow, she gives a lot of context for the nature of repressing fiction, whether written or viewed (she's not really dealing with music here, but spends a fair amount of time on movies and TV shows, since that's her main consumption that's not reading).
Right away she establishes that there will be no false equivalencies: The intermittent and unorganized cancellations from the political left can't hold a candle to the organized, nationally coordinated efforts on the right to ban books, troll authors, and silence video gamers. She makes it clear that it's not really about the fiction (or 'content' as we now call it), but power.
I expect those on the political right won't read this book, but those on the left should, if only to get some balance on how the left is screwing up its response (and how it might be done more effectively).
July 17, 2025
Actual rating 2.5 stars.
It had a really strong start in my opinion and just kind of fell apart after the first three chapters or so. I just found it somewhat funny (mostly annoying), that Gold talked all the time about how the problem was "/other people/ might not get it, but not me, /other people/!" and distanced herself from thinking like that but as soon as she talked about TV series & movies, she turned around and basically said the same thing! She's a cool girl, never played with barbies, just boy's toys which was such an annoying thing to say! Like, okay, and? You're just contracting yourself girl. She talked about the bad writing for Rings of Power, how the shots just werent good, the pacing was off, etc.. Which is fair and valid and her opinion. But why isn't it okay to say this about books? Why is it wrong and elitist to say that you enjoy fiction thats kinda hard to get and makes you think and engages you? The discrepancy was super irritating...
All in all I was kind of disappointed. I felt like the research was lacking too, maybe I'm just too used to the way literary criticism is written and worked with in academia.
It had a really strong start in my opinion and just kind of fell apart after the first three chapters or so. I just found it somewhat funny (mostly annoying), that Gold talked all the time about how the problem was "/other people/ might not get it, but not me, /other people/!" and distanced herself from thinking like that but as soon as she talked about TV series & movies, she turned around and basically said the same thing! She's a cool girl, never played with barbies, just boy's toys which was such an annoying thing to say! Like, okay, and? You're just contracting yourself girl. She talked about the bad writing for Rings of Power, how the shots just werent good, the pacing was off, etc.. Which is fair and valid and her opinion. But why isn't it okay to say this about books? Why is it wrong and elitist to say that you enjoy fiction thats kinda hard to get and makes you think and engages you? The discrepancy was super irritating...
All in all I was kind of disappointed. I felt like the research was lacking too, maybe I'm just too used to the way literary criticism is written and worked with in academia.
dnf
May 5, 2025dnf at 26% for now… i am interested in what gold has to say but i can’t seem to make any progress in the book
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May 16, 2025I am a librarian and I’ve been following book ban news very carefully for the last few years. I’ve seen countless cases of anxious, angry parents and activists demanding the removal of books from both school and public libraries. And I’ve seen just as many instances of librarians wearily or defiantly reiterating the ethical standards of the profession like they’re talking to an audience that cares.
The fact of the matter is, most people who want a book removed from (or relocated within) a library feel disgust and a sense of superiority over whoever the book is about- LGBTQ people, people of color, whatever. There’s no arguing because they have a hierarchy of good and bad categories of people in their heads and they will stop at nothing to keep their children from interacting with “bad” groups of people, even in the form of fictional books.
The argument “you can decide what your kid reads, but not what my kid reads!” is naive, because as far as these people are concerned, they’re fighting a righteous war for the soul of Western civilization- to allow any child to read books that foster empathy for others, is to lose a foot soldier in the fight against cultural decay. It’s like telling people “if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one!” - are you kidding? If you’re downright convinced it’s murder you’re going to want to stop others from murdering too, not just yourself. They’re similarly futile attempts to rationalize with religious insanity.
So I get sick of reading about it and I was reluctant to pick up this book, figuring it would be more of the same. It was not! Lyta Gold’s writing style is accessible, funny and acerbic. This is weird and probably presumptuous to say, but between her interest in literature and her love for Zelda, I feel like we could be pals.
I think one of the most interesting ideas Gold discusses is the use fascism makes of fiction. She writes, “It may be controversial to call the contemporary right-wing book banners fascist, but when it comes to a political ideology's relationship to fiction—both the enthusiastic, reality-crossing embrace of some stories and a rejecting terror of others—fascism is as fascism does.”
It's like a desired reality (a fiction) is imposed onto the present. By collective will they can remake a civilization by insisting that their version of it is not just the desired reality, but the real state of affairs right now, it's just obfuscated by academics and the media. Which, conveniently for the fascists, makes it all seem inevitable and hard to contest for an ordinary person. Gold writes, “But this again takes us back to the matter of fascist art, and what happens when people actively choose to believe in fantasy. In situations like this, it's not about being misled through images by simple ignorance as we see with dramatic conditioning, but about making a deliberate decision to live inside the dramatic condition itself: to pretend that life, real life, is a story, and that it follows narrative conventions.”
I see this happening, for example, every time I hear Karoline Leavitt speak- because despite being in such an important role, she hasn't mastered the art of lying to our faces yet. There's still too much shrill insecurity in her tone. You can tell from her lack of assurance that there's room for us to doubt what she's saying. I feel she'll probably be replaced eventually by someone who’s old enough to have less of the fervent acolyte and more of the party functionary about them.
I also appreciate that Gold does not shy away from big ideas and big conclusions. In the last chapter- which ordinarily would have answered the questions “is fiction dangerous?” and “what is fiction, anyway?” with some waffling “idk, who knows? Who am I to say?”- Gold argues that fiction is for its creators, and that the usefulness or profit making potential for fiction is entirely beside the point. I do wonder where the fans of fiction come into play here- she spends a lot of time talking about fandom but doesn’t really fold them into her final theory.
Gold has so many good insights that I'm just going to quote dump here.
On the (perceived, often exaggerated) power of fiction:
“And fictional representation is very powerful- art being generally more compelling than reality- which means it's always possible that art could seduce our fellow citizens into wicked beliefs…Fear of other people, and how they might work together to shift reality, is the reason that the contest over written language so often extends beyond the grounds of nonfiction and history (the present and past being obviously and reasonably politicized territory) into that which is definitionally not real…[we’re] aware that fiction affects us profoundly and mysteriously, to an extent that we can't tabulate or fully understand. And we know that other people are affected just as strongly and unpredictably as we are.”
“Representation is always endorsement if you assume that readers (always other readers, never you) are fundamentally stupid, incapable of doing anything other than identifying with the protagonist and absorbing their values. And then if readers are stupid, especially young readers, then it isn't safe for novels to depict the real world in all its variety, especially ugly and socially condemned behavior.”
“lt’s hard to know exactly what we're missing in our lives when storytelling is destroyed or never gets to exist in the first place; as is usual with censorship, it's hard to track the meaning of an absence. How do you understand a profound aesthetic experience you didn't get to have, or the formless feeling of not seeing yourself represented?”
She describes the “better dead than changed” dimension of conservative thought:
“[Book banners] are desperate to maintain a picture of a world with only themselves in it.”
“It's always more comforting to blame the images in popular fiction--and police its boundaries - than endure the fact that other realities could coexist alongside or in opposition to conservative, normative realism.”
She emphasizes that fiction is something distinct from reality or a tool to affect that reality:
“Advocating for great fiction as just another wellness diet doesn't indicate any sort of respect for it but rather instrumentalizes it into something positive and improving - that is, something that can be justified as worthy of our time.”
“Reality is something qualitatively different from fiction, and fiction is only dangerous when we don't respect that difference - when we forget that it serves a fundamentally different purpose and appeals to different needs.”
She both critiques and contextualizes leftist beliefs about fiction:
“If fictional representation is the first problem - the most important problem, the one that must be solved before any social progress can be made - then material inequality can be punted into some unknown future, to be dealt with when white people have finally come to their senses.”
“We may live in a state of prosecutorial overcorrection, but I think it's a dialectical response to the fact that the default position for a certain kind of white male writer and their self-absorbed anti-heroes has usually been ferocious, uncritical defense. We have always been in the courtroom, just on the other side of the aisle; the writer-and the literary critic- have normally worked as defense attorneys. The statement "I think this writing is misogynist" was perceived even before the days of social media as a criminal accusation, a presumption that you were putting the writer and his characters on trial, as well as any of his loving readers as codefendants. It's a very American sequence of ideas, really: to jump straight from a simple statement of critical opinion to the presumption of trials and witch burnings.”
“If the major reason that characters exist in a fictional story is to make a moral point, or serve as an exemplar, you'll always be defending or prosecuting them; if they only exist to serve as moral teachers, then you always need to justify your relationship with them. Their primary importance then becomes how they exist in relation to you, the reader: once again it's I am, not they are.”
“The accumulated weight of symbols in stories we know to be unreal and untrue creates an unidentifiable amount of pressure in the real world, but they can't act for us, and we shouldn't expect a corporation happily creating art about itself to meaningfully alter corporate power.”
Other reviewers have said the book is disjointed, and that is true. It does have the feel of someone getting out every single one of their thoughts related, or half related, to a subject. But I enjoy Gold's thinking and writing enough that I didn't mind wandering around with her.
In the section on fiction that imitates but distorts reality in a way that's favorable to the establishment, like true crime or Law and Order type shows, Gold comes close to suggesting that it is irresponsible and should be discouraged for its possible impacts on people's real behavior. I have to disagree. Any stricture on artistic expression other than straight up hate speech or abuse has to be avoided.
I understand that Gold and many others would argue that it's hardly free flowing, pure art that they're proposing censuring- stuff like Cops or CSI is as gross and cynical a marriage of the carceral system and corporate TV as you can imagine- and that money has already functioned as a stricture on what art gets created or promoted.
That is true, but as she says in Chapter 1, “ …I think it's genuinely dangerous to agree with the right's basic principles about the threat of dangerous fiction and to simply apply them differently according to a different set of political priorities. If there's no ideological stand against censorship as a concept, then all we have is a contest of power, and whoever wins just happens to be whoever is politically stronger at the moment. I think it's much wiser to invalidate the grounds for the right's entire argument: otherwise, they'll always have a justification for papering over fiction they find uncomfortable.”
4 / 5 stars. Fascinating, wide ranging and full of good insights.
The fact of the matter is, most people who want a book removed from (or relocated within) a library feel disgust and a sense of superiority over whoever the book is about- LGBTQ people, people of color, whatever. There’s no arguing because they have a hierarchy of good and bad categories of people in their heads and they will stop at nothing to keep their children from interacting with “bad” groups of people, even in the form of fictional books.
The argument “you can decide what your kid reads, but not what my kid reads!” is naive, because as far as these people are concerned, they’re fighting a righteous war for the soul of Western civilization- to allow any child to read books that foster empathy for others, is to lose a foot soldier in the fight against cultural decay. It’s like telling people “if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one!” - are you kidding? If you’re downright convinced it’s murder you’re going to want to stop others from murdering too, not just yourself. They’re similarly futile attempts to rationalize with religious insanity.
So I get sick of reading about it and I was reluctant to pick up this book, figuring it would be more of the same. It was not! Lyta Gold’s writing style is accessible, funny and acerbic. This is weird and probably presumptuous to say, but between her interest in literature and her love for Zelda, I feel like we could be pals.
I think one of the most interesting ideas Gold discusses is the use fascism makes of fiction. She writes, “It may be controversial to call the contemporary right-wing book banners fascist, but when it comes to a political ideology's relationship to fiction—both the enthusiastic, reality-crossing embrace of some stories and a rejecting terror of others—fascism is as fascism does.”
It's like a desired reality (a fiction) is imposed onto the present. By collective will they can remake a civilization by insisting that their version of it is not just the desired reality, but the real state of affairs right now, it's just obfuscated by academics and the media. Which, conveniently for the fascists, makes it all seem inevitable and hard to contest for an ordinary person. Gold writes, “But this again takes us back to the matter of fascist art, and what happens when people actively choose to believe in fantasy. In situations like this, it's not about being misled through images by simple ignorance as we see with dramatic conditioning, but about making a deliberate decision to live inside the dramatic condition itself: to pretend that life, real life, is a story, and that it follows narrative conventions.”
I see this happening, for example, every time I hear Karoline Leavitt speak- because despite being in such an important role, she hasn't mastered the art of lying to our faces yet. There's still too much shrill insecurity in her tone. You can tell from her lack of assurance that there's room for us to doubt what she's saying. I feel she'll probably be replaced eventually by someone who’s old enough to have less of the fervent acolyte and more of the party functionary about them.
I also appreciate that Gold does not shy away from big ideas and big conclusions. In the last chapter- which ordinarily would have answered the questions “is fiction dangerous?” and “what is fiction, anyway?” with some waffling “idk, who knows? Who am I to say?”- Gold argues that fiction is for its creators, and that the usefulness or profit making potential for fiction is entirely beside the point. I do wonder where the fans of fiction come into play here- she spends a lot of time talking about fandom but doesn’t really fold them into her final theory.
Gold has so many good insights that I'm just going to quote dump here.
On the (perceived, often exaggerated) power of fiction:
“And fictional representation is very powerful- art being generally more compelling than reality- which means it's always possible that art could seduce our fellow citizens into wicked beliefs…Fear of other people, and how they might work together to shift reality, is the reason that the contest over written language so often extends beyond the grounds of nonfiction and history (the present and past being obviously and reasonably politicized territory) into that which is definitionally not real…[we’re] aware that fiction affects us profoundly and mysteriously, to an extent that we can't tabulate or fully understand. And we know that other people are affected just as strongly and unpredictably as we are.”
“Representation is always endorsement if you assume that readers (always other readers, never you) are fundamentally stupid, incapable of doing anything other than identifying with the protagonist and absorbing their values. And then if readers are stupid, especially young readers, then it isn't safe for novels to depict the real world in all its variety, especially ugly and socially condemned behavior.”
“lt’s hard to know exactly what we're missing in our lives when storytelling is destroyed or never gets to exist in the first place; as is usual with censorship, it's hard to track the meaning of an absence. How do you understand a profound aesthetic experience you didn't get to have, or the formless feeling of not seeing yourself represented?”
She describes the “better dead than changed” dimension of conservative thought:
“[Book banners] are desperate to maintain a picture of a world with only themselves in it.”
“It's always more comforting to blame the images in popular fiction--and police its boundaries - than endure the fact that other realities could coexist alongside or in opposition to conservative, normative realism.”
She emphasizes that fiction is something distinct from reality or a tool to affect that reality:
“Advocating for great fiction as just another wellness diet doesn't indicate any sort of respect for it but rather instrumentalizes it into something positive and improving - that is, something that can be justified as worthy of our time.”
“Reality is something qualitatively different from fiction, and fiction is only dangerous when we don't respect that difference - when we forget that it serves a fundamentally different purpose and appeals to different needs.”
She both critiques and contextualizes leftist beliefs about fiction:
“If fictional representation is the first problem - the most important problem, the one that must be solved before any social progress can be made - then material inequality can be punted into some unknown future, to be dealt with when white people have finally come to their senses.”
“We may live in a state of prosecutorial overcorrection, but I think it's a dialectical response to the fact that the default position for a certain kind of white male writer and their self-absorbed anti-heroes has usually been ferocious, uncritical defense. We have always been in the courtroom, just on the other side of the aisle; the writer-and the literary critic- have normally worked as defense attorneys. The statement "I think this writing is misogynist" was perceived even before the days of social media as a criminal accusation, a presumption that you were putting the writer and his characters on trial, as well as any of his loving readers as codefendants. It's a very American sequence of ideas, really: to jump straight from a simple statement of critical opinion to the presumption of trials and witch burnings.”
“If the major reason that characters exist in a fictional story is to make a moral point, or serve as an exemplar, you'll always be defending or prosecuting them; if they only exist to serve as moral teachers, then you always need to justify your relationship with them. Their primary importance then becomes how they exist in relation to you, the reader: once again it's I am, not they are.”
“The accumulated weight of symbols in stories we know to be unreal and untrue creates an unidentifiable amount of pressure in the real world, but they can't act for us, and we shouldn't expect a corporation happily creating art about itself to meaningfully alter corporate power.”
Other reviewers have said the book is disjointed, and that is true. It does have the feel of someone getting out every single one of their thoughts related, or half related, to a subject. But I enjoy Gold's thinking and writing enough that I didn't mind wandering around with her.
In the section on fiction that imitates but distorts reality in a way that's favorable to the establishment, like true crime or Law and Order type shows, Gold comes close to suggesting that it is irresponsible and should be discouraged for its possible impacts on people's real behavior. I have to disagree. Any stricture on artistic expression other than straight up hate speech or abuse has to be avoided.
I understand that Gold and many others would argue that it's hardly free flowing, pure art that they're proposing censuring- stuff like Cops or CSI is as gross and cynical a marriage of the carceral system and corporate TV as you can imagine- and that money has already functioned as a stricture on what art gets created or promoted.
That is true, but as she says in Chapter 1, “ …I think it's genuinely dangerous to agree with the right's basic principles about the threat of dangerous fiction and to simply apply them differently according to a different set of political priorities. If there's no ideological stand against censorship as a concept, then all we have is a contest of power, and whoever wins just happens to be whoever is politically stronger at the moment. I think it's much wiser to invalidate the grounds for the right's entire argument: otherwise, they'll always have a justification for papering over fiction they find uncomfortable.”
4 / 5 stars. Fascinating, wide ranging and full of good insights.
July 25, 2025
Like, it seems, some other reviewers, I thought this was mostly going to be straightforwardly about book bans and the twitter purity police. I'm happy to have been proven wrong! It addresses fiction and the power we associate with it on a much more expansive and philosophical level, and ends not with a mild "but books can still change the world!" conclusion but with a call for writers and readers to recognize writing as a form of labor like any other that deserves collective representation and protection against exploitation, and fiction as a form of art that deserves to exist outside of the capitalist drive for productivity and usefulness (even in the sense of a use in "changing the world").
Along the way are a lot of interesting and insightful discussions about, among other things: corporate vs independent media and the publishing world, the way that protest art and the consumption of "radical" and diverse fiction has been co-opted by centrists as a complacent alternative to actual political action (and how consumption is general is treated as activism in a consumption-based capitalist society), the queerphobic and racist origins of moral panics around things like Dungeons & Dragons, the status of fiction in fascist ideology, and most wildly to me the involvement of the CIA in the creation of modern literary fiction as a genre.
This isn't a light read at all, and covers A LOT of ground really quickly even despite its length which makes some of the transitions between thoughts very blink-and-you'll-miss-it; so I can understand how some readers have found it disjointed and hard to follow. I honestly started taking notes while reading, which helped a lot, lol. Regardless, I highly recommend if you're someone who loves fiction (not even just books, but movies and TV as well) but wants a more solidly leftist grounding in it on a philosophical ethical level.
The only thing I wish is that I'd read the physical book rather than the audiobook, so I could more easily take notes and get the name spellings and all for all her sources to look further into hahahaha - so I may buy or borrow a print edition.
Along the way are a lot of interesting and insightful discussions about, among other things: corporate vs independent media and the publishing world, the way that protest art and the consumption of "radical" and diverse fiction has been co-opted by centrists as a complacent alternative to actual political action (and how consumption is general is treated as activism in a consumption-based capitalist society), the queerphobic and racist origins of moral panics around things like Dungeons & Dragons, the status of fiction in fascist ideology, and most wildly to me the involvement of the CIA in the creation of modern literary fiction as a genre.
This isn't a light read at all, and covers A LOT of ground really quickly even despite its length which makes some of the transitions between thoughts very blink-and-you'll-miss-it; so I can understand how some readers have found it disjointed and hard to follow. I honestly started taking notes while reading, which helped a lot, lol. Regardless, I highly recommend if you're someone who loves fiction (not even just books, but movies and TV as well) but wants a more solidly leftist grounding in it on a philosophical ethical level.
The only thing I wish is that I'd read the physical book rather than the audiobook, so I could more easily take notes and get the name spellings and all for all her sources to look further into hahahaha - so I may buy or borrow a print edition.
February 1, 2026
It’s ironic—I picked this book up as my one non-fiction read of the year to keep my critical thinking skills sharp, for it to not only put into words what I’d inherently pondered and felt about narrative storytelling but also clock me and neatly articulated how I’d come to view non-fiction as having value and purpose for my mind, while subconsciously dismissing my beloved sci-fi & fantasy fiction frivolous escapism.
Overall, though, this book touches on a wide range of subjects: representation, virtue signaling, high and low art, the effects of both late- and early-stage capitalism, fascism, incels, racial and economic political propaganda, and, more broadly, the overarching theme that fiction is art—and art is an ancient weapon that has been used and manipulated to justify the “otherness” of anyone who doesn’t agree with one’s own tastes, morals, and version of reality. In particular, Chapter 4, “Fear of Red Literature,” was especially insightful, as it’s highly relevant to our current political climate and unpacks the prevailing narratives of far-right ideology and thinking.
4/5 ⭐️ Again, a wide range of topics all circled back to the power and pitfalls of fiction. While some chapters were more engaging and better argued than others, the author generally kept a clear thread throughout, tying everything together and nudging readers to think more critically about how they engage with fiction.
Overall, though, this book touches on a wide range of subjects: representation, virtue signaling, high and low art, the effects of both late- and early-stage capitalism, fascism, incels, racial and economic political propaganda, and, more broadly, the overarching theme that fiction is art—and art is an ancient weapon that has been used and manipulated to justify the “otherness” of anyone who doesn’t agree with one’s own tastes, morals, and version of reality. In particular, Chapter 4, “Fear of Red Literature,” was especially insightful, as it’s highly relevant to our current political climate and unpacks the prevailing narratives of far-right ideology and thinking.
4/5 ⭐️ Again, a wide range of topics all circled back to the power and pitfalls of fiction. While some chapters were more engaging and better argued than others, the author generally kept a clear thread throughout, tying everything together and nudging readers to think more critically about how they engage with fiction.
January 10, 2025
In short, a really good place to start.
The author presents lots of interesting thoughts on western cultural anxieties, moral panics and how they impact storytelling or are impacted by storytelling.
I especially loved what they had to say about the public's recent tendency to make engaging with art a political act by proxy.
It did NOT give me any clarity on the public's response to the Barbie (2023) movie, that is one of the most confusing things I have ever witnessed lol.
The book goes a lot of places, and there are several arguments that I wish were more thoroughly researched or expounded on. Citing your sources still matters! It also struck me as very online and very millennial, and I wonder if that view is too narrow.
But I can take all that as a cue to read more on the matter.
The author presents lots of interesting thoughts on western cultural anxieties, moral panics and how they impact storytelling or are impacted by storytelling.
I especially loved what they had to say about the public's recent tendency to make engaging with art a political act by proxy.
It did NOT give me any clarity on the public's response to the Barbie (2023) movie, that is one of the most confusing things I have ever witnessed lol.
The book goes a lot of places, and there are several arguments that I wish were more thoroughly researched or expounded on. Citing your sources still matters! It also struck me as very online and very millennial, and I wonder if that view is too narrow.
But I can take all that as a cue to read more on the matter.
December 12, 2024
I think this book goes on for longer than it should...a judicious edit could have condensed its final quarter, which was beginning to lose my interest. That said, the rest of the book is a superb examination of how the right wing (and occasionally the hard core left) is attempting to hijack narratives and the authors of those narratives. It's been around much longer than people realize...they've simply become bolder...and perhaps more evil.
February 17, 2025
Quick warning, this review doesn’t contain any true spoilers but I do paraphrase and touch on some of the subjects that this book covers. If you want to go in totally blind, stop reading! This book showed so much promise in the introduction. The stage was set beautifully and as a musician I instantly related to the authors love of art. It seemed like Lyta Gold was going to take a central approach to this topic and I was so unbelievably ready to dive deeper with her. Then this book opened up and she started to lose me. There was some sense of direction to the way the ideas were organized but this felt less like a collection of essays and more like a raging social media rant. I fully understand that modern book bans are a partisan issue almost exclusively pushed by the right but as soon as the scope of this argument expanded, Golds biases came through quite clearly. Claiming that right-wing advocates of censorship just want power while proponents of left-wing cancel culture want to address legitimate issues? Calling those who oppose gender/race-bending characters Fascists? Implying that Jordan Peterson, a classical liberal, is a right-wing Fascist figurehead? I could go on. I happened to agree with some things but if you don’t agree with every single word Gold says, this starts to feel very unreadable very fast. Opinionated writing is something that I can generally tolerate, if not appreciate, even when I heavily disagree with the author. However, I can’t take anybody seriously when they’re throwing around unfair analysis and baseless accusations. There were some statements made in this book that operated on a very specific set of beliefs. A set of beliefs that Gold seemed unwilling to defend. To be clear, I’m all for criticizing conservatives for their constant, and often ironic, war against fiction. Golds call-out of the far-rights senseless hatred of diversity and the smoke and mirrors that corporate America has built around it was pretty spot on. The section on true-crime generated a lot of unique ideas and the critique of the US governments misdirection was valuable. The commentary on AI and its sudden appearance in art was compelling and dreadfully relatable. I even appreciated the critique of late-stage capitalism and its twisted view of art but this was not a fair, academic approach. So much of this book was just stating opinions as if they were fact rather than formulating a cohesive argument. More specifically, it felt like the boundaries of Golds arguments were constantly shifting to cut around the lefts involvement. She stated that she would only consider legitimate cancelations in publishing/distribution then quickly turned to attack the social commentary of the right. Refusing to acknowledge both the legitimacy of public perception and the lefts negative contributions to it was an absolute travesty. The historical breakdowns were interesting and this book certainly gave me a lot to think about but many of the arguments were superficial at best and fallacious at worst. I was expecting a relatively neutral breakdown of the war on fiction and this felt more like a political commentary. That’s primarily a marketing issue but it doesn’t justify the way that this was written. I don’t mean to insult Golds overall intelligence because this book made some good points and the core message is extremely important. It’s just such a sad irony that it’s buried in an ugly mess of heavily divisive and all too familiar socio-political theatrics.
January 5, 2025
I picked this up at the library randomly yesterday and read it breathlessly in two sittings. I was shocked that it has so few reviews on Goodreads, but then - considering Gold’s relentless criticism of both the publishing industry and also Amazon - perhaps that isn’t true. This is a smart, current book, and I really appreciate many of its arguments, particularly regarding how horrific AI is for art and artists, and how we need to ask more of fiction than to simply check diversity boxes. Gold is, alternatively, a Marxist and a bit of a nihilist - she first says people are smart enough to not be swayed by fiction, then claims that people only like capitalism because they’ve been swayed by fiction. At the same time, she is remarkably unimpressed by the possibilities of political art to change things (because if it is produced and consumed within capitalism it must, presumably, be toothless). I’m afraid that she is a little guilty of cherry picking examples for their ineffectiveness - there’s little treatment of music here, which has proved continually effective in organizing groups of people, nor does she talk about some major fiction that has inspired real life imitators (The Hunger Games comes immediately to mind). She is, perhaps, guilty of that same argumentative tendency that we so often see online, of collecting a bunch of examples from throughout history and using them to support an argument.
The book’s other flaw is that it is relentless, myopically American - to be fair, the United States is the most powerful and influential country in the world, but I still think that the lens loses nuance.
Over all, I wish I had a copy of my own of to take notes in because I’m sure I would be able to articulate my thoughts better - but I found it compelling (and frequently witty) as a piece of cultural criticism.
The book’s other flaw is that it is relentless, myopically American - to be fair, the United States is the most powerful and influential country in the world, but I still think that the lens loses nuance.
Over all, I wish I had a copy of my own of to take notes in because I’m sure I would be able to articulate my thoughts better - but I found it compelling (and frequently witty) as a piece of cultural criticism.
March 6, 2025
I overall enjoyed this book. I think it prompted some really good thinking in areas that I hadn't considered before and would be a great starting point for kicking off future conversations. I appreciated learning about the history of book banning, including the seemingly cyclical waves of complaints around themes of sexual liberation, gender roles, and political values throughout different eras and even political regimes. I recommend this book if you want to think more critically about how fiction interacts with the real world.
I wish there was more discussion on book bannings in particular. The focus of the book seemed to shift in the second half to the purpose of fiction, which was interesting, but I feel like there was a lot more ground that could have been covered as far as bannings/cancelations go. Gold started the book by promising that she would focus more on book bannings by liberals, as they typically have more nuanced reasoning, but seemed to mostly discuss the search for power and money in capitalism and right-wing politics. I expected J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series to make an appearance, since those books have gotten backlash from both sides of the aisle, but (unless I missed something) they didn't get a mention.
I loved how she tackled newer "diverse" media being mostly surface level and simply providing diversity in stories to check a box. After pointing that out, I wished that she then provided insight into how we can make stories that can have a deeper impact. There seemed to not be any practical take away other than the bleak thought that capitalism ruins everything and any attempt to be progressive within the current landscape can have, at most, marginal returns.
I wish there was more discussion on book bannings in particular. The focus of the book seemed to shift in the second half to the purpose of fiction, which was interesting, but I feel like there was a lot more ground that could have been covered as far as bannings/cancelations go. Gold started the book by promising that she would focus more on book bannings by liberals, as they typically have more nuanced reasoning, but seemed to mostly discuss the search for power and money in capitalism and right-wing politics. I expected J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series to make an appearance, since those books have gotten backlash from both sides of the aisle, but (unless I missed something) they didn't get a mention.
I loved how she tackled newer "diverse" media being mostly surface level and simply providing diversity in stories to check a box. After pointing that out, I wished that she then provided insight into how we can make stories that can have a deeper impact. There seemed to not be any practical take away other than the bleak thought that capitalism ruins everything and any attempt to be progressive within the current landscape can have, at most, marginal returns.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 7, 2024
I wanted to like this book. It started well, examining censorship, explaining that it usually boils down to “I, of course, have the capacity to read this book and not be influenced by its dangerous ideas, but other people, who are not as wise, would instantly put the ideas into practice, so the book must be banned.”
Loved the inclusion of television and movies in the discussion, but it was confusing to hear her professing her love for, to pick an example, Deep Space 9, only to tar all IP franchises later as merely a tool for corporations to disseminate messages designed to maintain the status quo, while making as much money as possible. Right after admitting to once having seen every episode of every iteration of CSI, the rest of the chapter explains in detail why all cop shows are bad.
The author has definitely mastered the art of hating and loving something at the same time. There were points made that resonated with me, but it all seemed very disjointed, and depressing. The one theme that did run throughout the whole book was the belief that the end of the world is imminent. Not circle the date on your calendar imminent, but check your phone for the time imminent. That made me feel like I should be updating my will rather than listening to an audiobook.
Two and a half stars for the occasional nuggets of gold.
April 17, 2025
It's rarely that I read a work of non fiction that isn't a memoir which makes me feel Some Type of Way. That leaves me with my jaw on the floor, makes me emotional and cleaves my heart.
If you want to fall in love with reading and art, this is a great book to read. It's great because it challenges the idea that art must necessitate, or be moral, but it is able to come out with nuance that does not unequivocally paint all literature in the same bold brush. While we can enjoy all form of arts and have subjective taste, we can also realise that our tastes are not created in a vacuum. Art is political, but censorship and moral panic around art is not useful. Diversity is important, but debasing it by recycling old IP is not anti-racist but vehemently patronizing to the communities it means to represent- but it is NOT fodder for the alt-right who dehumanizes them.
My favorite parts were about climate change, poptimism, art as a body politic, literary criticism as elitist and more.
This book was thrilling to read: especially as someone who enjoys a lot of trashy fiction as well as serious fiction. I've been documenting everything I read since 2017 (when I was twelve) and eight years later, I'm reviewing every book I read. My taste in books is quite different from the author, but my relationship to art is quite similar: and I'm stunned by how succintly it was worded.
If you want to fall in love with reading and art, this is a great book to read. It's great because it challenges the idea that art must necessitate, or be moral, but it is able to come out with nuance that does not unequivocally paint all literature in the same bold brush. While we can enjoy all form of arts and have subjective taste, we can also realise that our tastes are not created in a vacuum. Art is political, but censorship and moral panic around art is not useful. Diversity is important, but debasing it by recycling old IP is not anti-racist but vehemently patronizing to the communities it means to represent- but it is NOT fodder for the alt-right who dehumanizes them.
My favorite parts were about climate change, poptimism, art as a body politic, literary criticism as elitist and more.
This book was thrilling to read: especially as someone who enjoys a lot of trashy fiction as well as serious fiction. I've been documenting everything I read since 2017 (when I was twelve) and eight years later, I'm reviewing every book I read. My taste in books is quite different from the author, but my relationship to art is quite similar: and I'm stunned by how succintly it was worded.
July 12, 2025
-brought back the malaise :((
- the topic is really dear to me! i get SO IRRITATED when people get all moralistic about literature so i've wanted to read something that would allow me to put into words my own annoyances with those types of arguments. but it actually just gave me more to be mad about.
- i feel like it was a great intro to the topic but was kind of "loose" and rant-y at times (which was very irritating to read). once again, i think non-fic just makes me think of podcasts when i expect academic writing but i should,,,just not expect that.
- for example, the last essay (How To Blow Up Reality) mentioned genAI in writing a couple of timesm but the imagined dystopian future was about the "value of art" re: consumerism and capitalism but didn't really touch on how this could affect literacy levels, and subsequently agency and control. so it was a pretty shallow analysis (esp for being around 30-40 pages long) of AI etc. (basically AI bad, which yes,, true but also i want to know more)
- the author kind of drew this clean line between readers and writers in the book sometimes, and that was pretty?? silly?? etc etc
- my fav essay was Fear of A Red Literature: the one about communism and literary propaganda (IWW 👀)
- overall, kind of annoying but solid read! would read parts of it again.
[audiobook + loaned hardcopy from sfpl]
- the topic is really dear to me! i get SO IRRITATED when people get all moralistic about literature so i've wanted to read something that would allow me to put into words my own annoyances with those types of arguments. but it actually just gave me more to be mad about.
- i feel like it was a great intro to the topic but was kind of "loose" and rant-y at times (which was very irritating to read). once again, i think non-fic just makes me think of podcasts when i expect academic writing but i should,,,just not expect that.
- for example, the last essay (How To Blow Up Reality) mentioned genAI in writing a couple of timesm but the imagined dystopian future was about the "value of art" re: consumerism and capitalism but didn't really touch on how this could affect literacy levels, and subsequently agency and control. so it was a pretty shallow analysis (esp for being around 30-40 pages long) of AI etc. (basically AI bad, which yes,, true but also i want to know more)
- the author kind of drew this clean line between readers and writers in the book sometimes, and that was pretty?? silly?? etc etc
- my fav essay was Fear of A Red Literature: the one about communism and literary propaganda (IWW 👀)
- overall, kind of annoying but solid read! would read parts of it again.
[audiobook + loaned hardcopy from sfpl]
May 13, 2025
The intro was incredible, capturing the infusion and responsibility placed onto a book to educate or evoke empathy from the reader and the reader's own role as jury towards the book. While it looked at a range of issues after that, I'm afraid the book started falling short for me, sometimes contradicting itself. The author also tends to muddle her argument at times by overcomplicating it with points that are, at times, unrelated. I wish the organisation of the book and its essays was better. Right now, it reads as a little bit all over the place.
I liked the author's presentation of art as a commodity to be consumed, and I also liked the various examples and sources the author quoted, especially the one about revolutions by David Shumway. However, while reading all this, I couldn't help being distracted by the author often calling attention to herself, as if to single and signal herself out to be somehow superior to others, such as when she makes it a point to note that she did not play with Barbie dolls when she was younger, unlike other girls. I also wish she offered more insight into some of the issues she discusses and along with pointing out the problems, suggests possible solutions and measures too.
I liked the author's presentation of art as a commodity to be consumed, and I also liked the various examples and sources the author quoted, especially the one about revolutions by David Shumway. However, while reading all this, I couldn't help being distracted by the author often calling attention to herself, as if to single and signal herself out to be somehow superior to others, such as when she makes it a point to note that she did not play with Barbie dolls when she was younger, unlike other girls. I also wish she offered more insight into some of the issues she discusses and along with pointing out the problems, suggests possible solutions and measures too.
February 27, 2025
This book was both interesting and confusing. When the author made the point that fiction doesn’t have to be transformative - it can just be … it doesn’t need to teach empathy or challenge beliefs - I was like “Hell yeah”. As someone who reads both critically and just for fun, I’ve often felt this way myself and I hate a lot of the criticism (usually leveled at women and girls) for reading books that are not considered “literature”. I also loved learning a little about the history of certain movements, like the panic around the influence Dungeons & Dragons and the way politics and public opinion influence the production of fictional stories. However the book itself was a little all over the place, jumping from topic to topic, which made it hard to follow at times and often the author would contradict herself, leaving me confused at what the takeaway was supposed to be.
Oh and don’t worry, the author is very sure to let you know she “not like other girls”. She watches sci fi and as a kid, only played with “boy toys”, not Barbie, which is for those girls that are easily influenced by marketing (eye roll).
Oh and don’t worry, the author is very sure to let you know she “not like other girls”. She watches sci fi and as a kid, only played with “boy toys”, not Barbie, which is for those girls that are easily influenced by marketing (eye roll).
May 23, 2025
Dangerous Fictions is a book that desperately needed to be written.
It calls out a lot of the most frustrating and poignant points about the nature of books and writing, like how authors of color are often pushed to write empathetically instructive narratives for white readers, the maddening (and very old) fears about how certain fiction will misinform or twist the minds of readers to dangerous epidemic levels, the idea that fiction constantly has to prove its practical worth in the west, etc.
I was so excited to see someone tackle these issues and I found myself nodding aggressively as I read. But I do wish Gold had gone deeper into the topics—mainly through research. A lot of the book reads like an articulately expressed opinion and little else. Not that Gold never refers to research and never backs up her points, but it often felt too thin considering how many people would vehemently disagree with her arguments.
Still, this book gave me some new insights and ideas to explore further on my own, and I enjoyed it.
It calls out a lot of the most frustrating and poignant points about the nature of books and writing, like how authors of color are often pushed to write empathetically instructive narratives for white readers, the maddening (and very old) fears about how certain fiction will misinform or twist the minds of readers to dangerous epidemic levels, the idea that fiction constantly has to prove its practical worth in the west, etc.
I was so excited to see someone tackle these issues and I found myself nodding aggressively as I read. But I do wish Gold had gone deeper into the topics—mainly through research. A lot of the book reads like an articulately expressed opinion and little else. Not that Gold never refers to research and never backs up her points, but it often felt too thin considering how many people would vehemently disagree with her arguments.
Still, this book gave me some new insights and ideas to explore further on my own, and I enjoyed it.
August 18, 2025
This was a really interesting read, and about much more than just book bans and gatekeeping, which was what I had initially expected. Many of the arguments resonated with my own thoughts (though presented better than I did in my head). The book generally explores the assumption that fiction holds such power that it can change its consumers (through books, gaming, TV, etc.), and by extension the world itself and by default being it something dangerous to the status quo.
That said, there were a few chapters in the middle where I found her arguments muddled and lost sight of the main point. Gold isn't shy with her political views when it comes to everything the book touches on. I didn’t expect her to be impartial (and I did agree with much of what she said), but I thought that in the beginning she was good at also acknowledging counterarguments. Unfortunately, that nuance faded the further I got into the book.
Overall, though, it did give food for thought and I know I will reread this in the future and maybe even highlight my favourite arguments.
That said, there were a few chapters in the middle where I found her arguments muddled and lost sight of the main point. Gold isn't shy with her political views when it comes to everything the book touches on. I didn’t expect her to be impartial (and I did agree with much of what she said), but I thought that in the beginning she was good at also acknowledging counterarguments. Unfortunately, that nuance faded the further I got into the book.
Overall, though, it did give food for thought and I know I will reread this in the future and maybe even highlight my favourite arguments.
June 25, 2025
4.5 stars.
This book articulates a lot about what I’ve been thinking about published fiction (not just books, but fiction at large) - the “danger” in the title of the book is ironically (or maybe unironically) how fiction makes us satisfied with the status quo in general and lulls us into inaction (rather than action). Gold’s use of a kind of subversion-containment argument here is not lost on me and maybe it did feel a bit repetitive at times, but she really nuances her work with a lot of references to current and older classical works of fiction (including telly shows and movies) which I am familiar with - this is, after all, a book for ppl who read or ppl who think a lot about what they are reading.
The last chapter does have an interesting call to action and about whether art is futile or not - why read, why watch shows, look at art? I think this is a qn that I might ponder on for awhile longer.
This book articulates a lot about what I’ve been thinking about published fiction (not just books, but fiction at large) - the “danger” in the title of the book is ironically (or maybe unironically) how fiction makes us satisfied with the status quo in general and lulls us into inaction (rather than action). Gold’s use of a kind of subversion-containment argument here is not lost on me and maybe it did feel a bit repetitive at times, but she really nuances her work with a lot of references to current and older classical works of fiction (including telly shows and movies) which I am familiar with - this is, after all, a book for ppl who read or ppl who think a lot about what they are reading.
The last chapter does have an interesting call to action and about whether art is futile or not - why read, why watch shows, look at art? I think this is a qn that I might ponder on for awhile longer.
July 4, 2025
“What happens when, despite all the moral panics over imaginary worlds, the skills and knowledge gained from experiencing those realms hasn't busted us out of prison?”
3.5 (rounded up)
while i enjoyed lyta gold’s arguments, i feel that she says so much that it is almost like she says nothing at all. like many others who read this book, i agree that her ideas are disjointed and that the book reads somewhat like a twitter thread. maybe i’m being too harsh because i did not appreciate some of her criticism surrounding rings of power and andor lol. i do want to clarify, however, that i do agree with many of gold’s sentiments. there are great sections in this book. i especially enjoyed her discussion of panics over fiction and its long history. i would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in book bans and the moral conversations surrounding fiction today.
3.5 (rounded up)
while i enjoyed lyta gold’s arguments, i feel that she says so much that it is almost like she says nothing at all. like many others who read this book, i agree that her ideas are disjointed and that the book reads somewhat like a twitter thread. maybe i’m being too harsh because i did not appreciate some of her criticism surrounding rings of power and andor lol. i do want to clarify, however, that i do agree with many of gold’s sentiments. there are great sections in this book. i especially enjoyed her discussion of panics over fiction and its long history. i would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in book bans and the moral conversations surrounding fiction today.
March 27, 2025
2.5/5 rounded up
I agonized over what I thought about this book, because it's a very interesting concept especially in a time where book banning is becoming more prevalent. This book discusses topics like the debates around moral value ascribed to fiction, how capitalism constrains the kinds of stories that get told, and who gets to tell them, why there are so many police procedural shows out there.
Specifics topics in this book were felt new and interesting to read about, but I think the overall execution of the book falls short. There are some sections of this book were well researched and expanded on, but this is not the standard. Other topics are very briefly glossed over and a lot the arguments felt surface level and repetitive at times (and also just felt like borderline ranting of Gold's opinions). This book was just too long for me and it was such a slog to get through to the end and I finished it out of spite...
I agonized over what I thought about this book, because it's a very interesting concept especially in a time where book banning is becoming more prevalent. This book discusses topics like the debates around moral value ascribed to fiction, how capitalism constrains the kinds of stories that get told, and who gets to tell them, why there are so many police procedural shows out there.
Specifics topics in this book were felt new and interesting to read about, but I think the overall execution of the book falls short. There are some sections of this book were well researched and expanded on, but this is not the standard. Other topics are very briefly glossed over and a lot the arguments felt surface level and repetitive at times (and also just felt like borderline ranting of Gold's opinions). This book was just too long for me and it was such a slog to get through to the end and I finished it out of spite...
March 29, 2025
4.5 rounded up. This was a great look at how fiction shapes life and life shapes fiction and the discourse that results (and should result). The audiobook is also very satisfying, although it should be noted that the narrator sounds significantly older than the author. This isn't a big deal, but I did do a double-take when the author was talking about growing up playing Zelda but this was being read by someone a generation or two older. Both the author and narrator do a great job, though.
I received a free ALC for library employees from Libro.fm.
I received a free ALC for library employees from Libro.fm.
September 20, 2025
This book takes to task two banal, oft-repeated statements about literature: first, that fictional stories are somehow dangerous, and second, that fiction is worthwhile because of what it can "teach" you. Gold is an observant and astute critic, thoroughly covering the history of moral panics over fiction and tracing that history to our present book-banning frenzy. A few of her arguments are repetitive, and the book doesn't have much of a clear arc, feeling instead like a series of scattered points. But I love the way she states those points, so I didn't really mind!
February 27, 2026
Gold proposes good questions on how we should think about fiction--morally, ethically, politically and in comparison to reality. She provides some interesting insight to these questions, ones that I agree with and ones that challenged me and ones that I perhaps would disagree on. Nonetheless, I liked the points that were brought up and will probably have me rethinking about how I think about the media I consume on a broader level. Overall, I really liked what was presented however I felt that perhaps the organization of the book was kind of disorganized.
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