Racial prejudice
In Erasure, a brilliant author plays a kind of intellectual prank on his agent to expose the racial biases that shape the agent's perception of his art. This means that racial prejudice forms a major part of the novel's imagery, because the book that the author writes for his agent, "My Pafology," is primarily an expose of prejudice. Erasure also indirectly portrays racial prejudice in the reception of the novel by showing how this attempt at satire was received; because the novel had all the expected motifs and genre staples, the novel accidentally does very well with critical acclaim.
Literary imagery
The imagery of literature is employed in a meta-narrative way. The effect is that the novel serves as a kind of self-reference. It is a book about a novelist writing a book. In a way, the meta-narrative goes one level deeper because the book within the book is actually not meant to be taken seriously, but is intended to expose misconceptions about black novelists. So, the novel is a book about a book about books. This meta-narrative imagery is both clever and effective.
Personal revelation and horror
The author in the book, a man named after jazz legend Thelonious Monk and author Ralph Ellison, witnesses a unique imagery that only he can see. His personal revelation is that he knows his motives were ironic which led to his success. Knowing that the audience wasn't self-aware enough to recognize the book as satire is horrifying to him. The concrete imagery is the ironic success, the Book Award, the critical acclaim—all good things, but the abstract imagery is personally revolting and confusing. He struggles to understand whether he has done a good thing or a bad thing.
Duplicity and names
There is an important use of imagery relating to identity and sincerity. When the novelist wrote books from a sincere point of view, they were epic and genius, relating to the archetypal forces of the unconscious with allusions to Greek mythology, but none of that worked commercially, primarily because of his race. In order to make the book his agent wants, Monk has to undermine his own artistic convictions. He publishes "My Pafology" under a pseudonym (an important allusion to a famous song), and then changes the name of the book too, to a profane word. The book does well, so he does interviews about his renamed satire (which they think is earnest), using his own nom de plume.
