the real romantasy fantasy
a guest post by lyta gold
Lyta Gold is a friend of mine who writes criticism and covers important local news:
One of the things I like about Lyta is that she’s a writer with high standards and she approaches popular stuff that is Not Good with generous curiosity. She is interested in why the stuff has wide appeal and what it’s tapping into and she is not interested in it in the sense that she just wants to talk about how other people are stupid. For instance, she reads a lot of romantasy, something I don’t think anybody else I know even admits to doing.
Lyta wrote a book last year about moral panics and literature called Dangerous Fictions, which just came out in paperback, and when we were talking about something or another she mentioned that romantasy frequently pops up on “banned books” lists. One of the things she and I often chat about is the way “cool” has no political valence—stuff can be very, very uncool but also (for instance) singled out in ways that have nothing to do with their aesthetic qualities. If romant…
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