Much Ado About NOTHING

Blank Books

   We have yet another occasion to think, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That is, we have been scooped, yet again, by someone who, yet again, has come up with the idea of publishing a book that consists of blank pages. Apparently books of this sort are both easier and cheaper to produce than the other kind.

    Those of you on the right side of the political spectrum will quickly understand why the book below is appealing, devoid of content and selling well these days.

    Apparently quick-witted, left-wing ‘writers’ have responded with such titles as Reasons To Vote For Republicans: A Captivating Interpretation and, the perhaps more complex, Reasons to Vote for Republicans: An Incomprehensible Guide. In an age of instant publishing such titles are likely to quickly multiply. Self publishers can also be creative and one has already contributed to the genre with Everything Obama Knows About the Economy.

    Evidence of such erudition is, of course, to be found also in England, where this “exhaustively researched” book was produced a few months ago. Not surprisingly, given the subject, it has no content.

   Remarks and reviews have been mostly favorable and here are a few samples:

“A well-researched, well-written and 100% accurate catalog of Mr. Trump's greatest strengths,” a customer named Michael Coles wrote. “People have read it, and let me tell you, they love it. It's the best book. It's going to be yuuuuuge. Bigly.”

“Very, very, yugely poor translation from original Russian,” Nancy Gormezano added. “And that's Putin it mildly. Maybe kindle version be better?”

    The Brits, once again, of course, have a long tradition of producing learned tomes of this sort. A few years ago an enterprising chap published What Every Man Thinks About Apart from Sex which obviously contained nothing. It holds the Guinness Book of Records record in the category for the published book with the most blank pages. He even sold the translation rights and then came up with the idea of producing a book with nothing but grey pages of various shades which bore the clever title Fifty Shades of Grey.  Although the title was slightly different, the publishers of Fifty Shades of Gray were not amused.

Searching For Nothing

    Now, in addition to wondering why you didn’t think of publishing books like these, rather than attempting to find the words to actually write one, you are probably wondering how I know all of this. How does one find books about nothing? That was my question when I ran across the new blank book since I distinctly remember one from the past. Unfortunately that was all I remembered, so I guess I should have said ‘vaguely remember’ rather than ‘distinctly’. What would one search for and how could even a good googler avoid long lists consisting of books such as Being and Nothingness, which contains nothing but really big words some of which are from a different language, or books by nihilists which are also often about nothing?

    Unfortunately for you, I am not going to reveal the complex search strategy that was used to find the book which you will certainly recognize, but which you would not have been able to find without my assistance. On the other hand, perhaps you would have simply remembered the title.

The Nothing Book

     There were also offspring: The Nothing Album; The Nothing Notebook; The Next to Nothing Book; The Nothing’s Happening Book, and supposedly a Son of Nothing was in the works. Thousands of copies of the book were sold and reviewers were happy because having to read nothing made their jobs easier. Here are some sample reviews:

“A Book You Can Put Down,” by Angela Taylor, New York Times, June 27, 1974.

The first sentence: “What can you say about a book that is virtually unreadable?”

It concludes: This reviewer can safely say that it is the lightest reading of this or any other summer.” It was published by Harmony Books, had 192 blank pages and cost $3.

“Nothing Ventured, Something Gained:The World of Writers,” Herb Kenny, Boston Globe, July 7, 1974. In this review some spinoff subjects are suggested:

The Compassion of Pawnbrokers

The Ethics of Slum Landlords

The Humility of Norman Mailer

The Shyness of Don RIckles

The Generosity of Banks

“And Nothing's Plenty for Me: The Nothing Book : Wanna Make Something of It?”, Richard Freedman, The Washington Post, Aug. 25, 1974.

“The Nothing Book is a heartening response to the print explosion. It is a first-rate piece of minimal art, going far beyond the plays of Beckett, the sculptures of Giacometti or the music of John Cage. At a time of dismaying slovenliness of production by most publishers, it has not one typographical error.”

Plagiarism and Nothingness

    You are likely thinking that perhaps you might try a Canadian version of such a book and wonder if nothing can be plagiarized. The question “Can Nothing Be Plagiarized?” was asked back in 1974 by a Belgium publisher who had published a blank book a few years before -The Memoirs of an Amnesiac - and thought The Nothing Book was just a ripoff of their idea.

    Nothing appears to have come of the case so go ahead and type up a title.