Abstract
The self-improvement industry has been analyzed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including those of sociology, history, and religion, but its relation to literature has not received the attention it demands. Self-help is inextricable from the history and future of reading around the globe. Using Samuel Smiles'sSelf-Help(1859) as a case study, I unearth the overlooked role of the self-help hermeneutic, a practical reading method that collapses period, nation, and genre in the global dissemination of literary culture. I then demonstrate that the pastiche didacticism of Smiles's early readers has become a mainstream conceit of twenty-first-century novels, including Mohsin Hamid'sHow to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,Tash Aw'sFive Star Billionaire,and Sheila Heti's HowShould a Person Be?.By putting on hold the standard critique of the genre's homogeneous neoliberal influence, I recalibrate the scales by which we measure self-help's literary and political relevance.
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