Empty Page

JSF asks famous authors for an empty page. They respond.

Richard Powers was the first to respond. "The favor is indeed strange," he wrote, "but wonderful. The more I think about it, the more resonance it gets: a museum of pure potential, the unfilled page!" He sent along the next sheet from the yellow legal pad on which he writes. When I held it to my face, I could see the indentations from the writing on the page that was once above it. Within a week the indentations had disappeared – the ghost words were gone – and the page was again perfectly flat.

I received a piece of paper from Susan Sontag. It was slightly smaller than the standard 8 1/2" x 11", and her name was printed across the top – for archival purposes, I imagined. John Barth sent me an empty page. It was classic three-hole style with the red strip up the margin. (How strange, I thought, that America’s most famous metafictionist should compose on the most traditional, childlike paper.) His note: "Yours takes the prize for odd requests and quite intrigues me."

A sheet of empty graph paper came from Paul Auster, which evoked his style. An absolutely gorgeous mathematician’s log from Helen DeWitt, accompanied by advice to the young writer about getting to know one’s typesetter. A page ripped from David Grossman’s notebook – small, worn even in its newness, somehow strong. He sent along a beautiful letter filled with observations, opinions, regrets, hopes and no mention of blank paper. A clean white page from Arthur Miller, no accompanying note. Paper from Zadie Smith, Victor Pelevin, David Foster Wallace ("You are a weird bird JSF"), Peter Carey, John Updike. . .

I find this at Der Tagesspiegel. Has this been previously printed elsewhere?

More from Conversational Reading:

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2. $8 Million for a 1-page outline Why? Just to cover the cost of the advance, the publisher — which will receive about half the $25.95 cover price of each book sold...

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