The ontology of a self-help book: a paradox of its own existence

Abstract

The self-help book is celebrated as an iconic feature of popular culture. Indeed, as a non-fiction genre, the self-help book has become a global publishing success. However, the self-help book displays no recognition of its connection to a genre of writing, characterising itself as a singular, solitary text. This article engages a body of research and practice that has unproblematically assumed this normative, “self-sufficient” characterisation in its commentary of the self-help book. This article explores the self-help book as a textual form whose appearance as “self-contained” is deployed as part of a rhetorical strategy to invoke “reading”. It shows that the self-help book displays in its discourse an anxiety around this characterisation. This is unpacked by examining the self-help book through a paradox: on the one hand, reading a self-help book is characterised as the single requirement for its readers to fulfil their quest for self-help; while, on the other, that invocation of reading is in itself insufficient for self-help.