ABSTRACT
This introduction discusses how we judge literature as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It uses Dead Poets Society (1989) to question the metrics we use when assessing literary quality, and suggests that although plotting literary quality on a graph seems foolish, what we practise instead is hardly much better. The chapter advocates reading ‘bad’ literature in order to hone our reading skills and better understand what and how literature is ‘good’. This chapter discusses book prizes and how they attempt to confer quality on the texts they judge. There are also problems with book prizes to do with politics and economics. To judge a book is therefore equally valid for the common reader, and this book sets up that possibility. This introduction establishes ‘hyper-contemporary literature’, a temporary state for literature that categorises it as unread and lacking a critical consensus. Hyper-contemporary literature is what most readers spend their time reading. The introduction sets out how the book will proceed, with examinations of five literary discourses: feminism, postcolonialism and critical race, queer, class, and reading book reviews. It will examine these discourses by using the 2019 International Dylan Thomas Prize hyper-contemporary longlist as its reading list.
