Dangerous Fictions

Honorable Mention for the Pop Culture Association Awards

“Through lively examples in history and recent events in popular culture, this book makes learning about fears surrounding stories delightfully entertaining.” —Misha Stone, The Seattle Times

“Lyta Gold faces these moral panics around fiction head on … A concise overview of the history of moral panics in the U.S.” —Michelle Petty, BUST

“A soundly reasoned dive into how fictional representations are used and interpreted.” —Eleanor J. Bader, New Pages

“Reality has been severely altered in the past few years—with fiction as a balm or a cause—but Gold’s analysis might be a way through.” — Sam Franzini, Our Culture Mag

“With wit and moral clarity, Gold argues that books are wonderful but they are actually not that powerful: they don’t have the power to make us bad, and they also don’t have the power to make us good or empathetic … The overall message is exactly what I needed right now.” —Maris Kreizman, The Maris Review

“Dangerous Fictions is a rich text, well-researched and full of insights … The challenge, in attempting to communicate how compelling this book is, looms large.” —Gwen Papp, The Rumpus

“Throughout, Gold blends rigorous scholarship with internet-literate humor, and in the end, she flips the script on fiction’s moral critics, claiming the allegedly harmful effects of fiction are the fault of bad readers, not of bad writing, since readers can’t be stopped from seeing what they want to see. This much-needed beacon guides readers through the morass of present-day cultural discourse.” —Publishers Weekly

“An incisive book debut with a thoughtful, often witty, examination of the causes and consequences of banning novels … A savvy contribution to current debates.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Fiction incites and excites; is both championed and reviled as a force for ideology or empty calories for our lowest social common denominator. But what’s really going on? Effortlessly witty, Lyta Gold’s Dangerous Fictions rejects dead-ended questions of utility and examines from a hundred angles what we hear, what we read, what we watch, and why. Everything from video games or chick lit to explicit political imagination can be a battleground—Gold shows us that careful attention can reveal the competing social and structural forces which shape the way we live, breathe, and dream in Western culture.” —Timothy Faust, author of Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next

Lyta Gold is a critic, essayist, and fiction writer living in Queens. Her work has appeared in The Baffler, Protean, the New York Review of Architecture, and Current Affairs.

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