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56 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Rhian Waller | Postcolonial Pictures revolutionaries, to transgender muxes, from multilingual writers and activists to underprivi- leged monoglot peasants. This is reflected, somewhat, in the format of the book. The centre pages include photographs that restore human faces to the visual story. These efforts may be lost on the casual viewer, however. The problem of lost symbolism and buried signification is best illustrated through the cover photograph’s “tight-coupling” with the title. The potent animal imagery of the snake is cultu- rally relevant to Mexico. To a western audience, snakes are coded in negative terms: they are “monstrous” (Snively, 2018), in Judeo-Christian systems, they are at best a symbol of wisdom, but often signify danger, deceit and evil (Knowles, 2014). Thematically, this fits with the hidden dangers encountered or avoided by Theroux (drug cartels, corrupt police), but one has to read further to realise the true relevance of the symbol. Theroux writes about the creation myth of Quetzalcoatl, the life-generating snake-god, and the revered figure of the ancestor-serpent in several Mesoamerican belief systems. Likewise, the desert, in this text, is a multidimensional site, a place of death and deliverance for migrants, sometimes still, sometimes alive with flocks of flitting mariposas (yellow butterflies). Just as the title is inadequate when encountered in iso- lation, the desert image is an inadequate sign for Mexico as a whole, and also for the complexity of the desert space itself. Although the title image and text represents what Genette would call a “public paratext” (2009: 9), a more accurate decoding requires engagement with this, or other texts. The fact is, far more people will see the empty desert of the front cover than will read the book. The bane, therefore, spreads wider than the remedy. Book covers operate as branding tools (Drew and Sternberger, 2005) and as adverts for the enclosed product. Branding, as Steenkamp notes, is an attempt to make a product distinctive to consumers, who may base their purchasing decisions on the reputation and recognition of that brand (2019). Both brands and signs, however complex, are incapable of accurately and wholly replicating a subject as multifaceted as a novel-length narrative, and as shifting and diverse as, for instance, a social group or an entire country. Instead, a process of encapsulation takes place wherein landscapes and people are translated, imperfectly, into textual and visual signs. Simul- taneously, they are rendered into abstract commodities for consumer entertainment. Branding, like the semiotic process itself, never provides “the whole object, but only ever its criterial aspects” (Kress and van Leeuwin, 2005). In the case of a product (Steenkamp, 2019), the criterial aspects might be the size, shape, colour and logo. However, when the same process is applied by proxy to an entire landmass or culture, there is inevitably an arbitrary or conscious selection process, which guarantees omissions, limitations and simplifications. This may occur by design or, as I suspect in this case, simply because of practices that have, through long ope- ration, become unquestioned convention. Conclusion Over time, Theroux’s travel narratives have evolved from overt Othering to more open and inclusive dialogues. In comparison, the Penguin book covers of his work are remarkably uniform, continuing to exhibit covert, encoded signifiers of consumer privilege and lingering colonial attitudes. These are subtly integrated into book titles, which include individual words and phrases which have accrued stereotypical signified meanings, and through the selection, composition and deployment of particular images.