Authorial branding conceals literature’s commodity status behind individualism

Evidence

Yet against Erica’s failure it is possible to read Changez—and indirectly through him Mohsin Hamid himself—as the image of the successful fiction maker. Brouillette has noted how literary texts by postcolonial writers often sit alongside the paratexts of authorial marketing, such as press interviews and media features (and in Hamid’s case journalistic forays) in a process of “authorial branding.” Taken together, these texts and paratexts emphasize commodification, whereas “the figure of the author becomes … a way of concealing mass production in individualism.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 463

Categorization

• XREF: Brouillette’s authorial-branding critique is directly useful for the reader’s evidence-vs-illustration hinge with Hamid’s public persona. — connects to: Literature’s own content overlaps with economic form, weakening it as an abstract model