Literature has never looked weirder--full of images, colors, gadgets, and footnotes, and violating established norms of character, plot, and narrative structure. Yet over the last 30 years, critics have coined more than 20 new "realisms" in their attempts to describe it. What makes this decidedly unorthodox literature "realistic"? And if it is, then what does "realism" mean anymore? Examining literature by dozens of writers, and over a century of theory and criticism about realism, The Moral Worlds of Contemporary Realism sorts through the current critical confusion to illustrate how our ideas about what is real and how best to depict it have changed dramatically, especially in recent years. Along the way, Mary K. Holland guides the reader on a lively tour through the landscape of contemporary literary studies--taking in metafiction, ideology, posthumanism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism--with forays into quantum mechanics, new materialism, and Buddhism as well, to give us entirely new ways of viewing how humans use language to make sense of--and to make--the world. Focusing on literary form, technique, and genre, Mary K. Holland's The Moral Worlds of Contemporary Realism compares contemporary 'realist' writers such as David Foster Wallace, Steve Tomasula, and Ted Chiang to nineteenth-century versions of realism, arguing that 'realism' is best understood as writing emerging at historical junctures when social consensus about the real is undergoing paradigmatic changes. Infused with her own passion for reading, writing, and teaching, her analyses of these challenging writers resonate with authenticity, moral clarity, and deep understanding of how literary texts achieve their effects. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of realistic fictions.