The death of the author has been a fundamental constant of post-modern literary criticism ever since Roland Barthes? essay of 1967. Now an economist, Professor Philip M. Parker, has turned the entire question on its head. The really interesting question about someone who has been described as ?the most prolific author in history? now concerns the trickier question of whether, in any meaningful sense, this author?or what Barthes would call a ?scriptor?? has ever actually been alive.
(That’s an excerpt from the article “How to Write 85,000 Books,” by Chris McManus, published in AIR 14:2.)