The Naked Page Project

What comes after emptiness? Out readers answer the question for the young novelist

I don't know what my expectations were when, as part of an essay on emptiness in the 50th anniversary issue of Playboy, I asked readers to rip a page from the magazine and mail it to me. But what I received was so astounding--in quantity, sincerity and imagination--that I now feel a need, a responsibility, to share some of the results.

While many readers followed the letter of the instructions and simply mailed back the blank page, many more extrapolated, filling the page with random thoughts, drawings, angry rants, confessions and philosophical musings. A prisoner, sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars, folded the blank page into a paper airplane and mailed it to me. A respondent from Lafayette, Indiana sent me an empty box of cigarettes, noting it was "every bit as stimulating as a good piece of college-ruled notebook paper." Fair enough. A musician sent me an empty musical stave. Someone who provided no name or return address sent an envelope filled with nothing at all.

For some reason many people were compelled to let me know where they were when they read the article. (The majority were on the toilet, which I take as neither a compliment nor an insult.) Another common sentiment was a hesitancy to tear anything from the issue. As a respondent from Mission Viejo, California put it, "I can't bring myself to the place where I deface the magazine I have cherished for the past 33 years." Others came from a less idealistic position: "What I want to know is, will ripping out a piece of paper lessen the value of my collector's edition?"

What unified the responses was a common desire to know the results of the project. How many pages were sent back? What did people do with their pages? What are you going to do with them?

The last question first. Beyond this piece I'm not going to do anything with them. I can't. They're too personal. I've wanted to show them to friends, but that would undermine a trust that was implicitly granted to me. I knew sharing the results would require great care: Most important, nothing could be revealed that might identify the author.

As for the first question--how many were sent back--at the time I write this, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300, which is a pretty inspiring neighborhood, given the effort (and postage) required. As one respondent put it, "Keep in mind I'm too lazy to send back rebates for cash, yet I wanted to send this to you." As I understand it, empty paper is still trickling in. Presumably that trickle will dry up soon, but it's nice to think of a page coming back 10 years from now.

What did people do with the pages? I think the best way to do the responses justice is to excerpt a few of them. The ones below are by no means exhaustive. I wish I could include every response that made me think, but that would be every response, and that would fill the magazine.

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I just found out about one minute ago that I'm pregnant. My husband and I have been trying for a couple of years. He had a vasectomy about 12 years ago, then a reversal that didn't work. I found your article very fascinating, because even though I just found out I'm pregnant (home test) and will have it confirmed by my doctor tomorrow (blood test), I don't know if I'm pregnant with one embryo or five. Due to an in vitro fertility process, I had five healthy embryos implanted 10 days ago. Now I know that regardless of what the results are, I am not having a litter of children. I am having one, so talk about empty pages--not just for the one that will be born but for the one(s?) that never will.

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These naked pages come from my classroom of senior honors students. A girl in class pointed out, when I proposed that we send you our sheets, that their paper is inherently more full of potential than Freud's, because they are alive.... I know not what I will do should the administration of our Catholic high school find out we've been reading material from Playboy.

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Is this really blank? Or is it simply too full for us to focus?

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I'm a convict. I never seem to learn. I would've been free years ago, but I chose to fight instead of becoming a prison fuckboy or rat. Now I will die in prison.... I read your article, and it pissed me off a lot. I felt total anger for anyone who thinks so much about paper.... Then I had a really good workout, and I noticed this page open and took another moment to comprehend the whole anatomy of what could actually come out of a mind.... I've read more than 1,000 books in the past six years. Mostly fiction. I get a great amount of escape from fiction.... Your article brought some much-needed optimism to my life today. You also helped me avoid crushing an idiot's face in. Carpe diem!

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I contemplated what I should put on the blank page that you asked to be returned to you. After much consideration I decided that I would send along a poem that my father wrote to me in 1993, nine full years before his death. I found it in his desk drawer in a sealed envelope three days after he died. The envelope simply read, "Personal--to [author's name]." The enclosed poems spoke volumes to me. I am certain others may write to you with poignant thoughts or ideas on the blank pages that you asked them to fill. However, my page will be filled with words from an old man to his young daughter, which he wrote to help her through the incredible, lonely process of death.

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I hope you get your stack of pages as tall as the Empire State Building. I also hope that the unlucky intern in charge of this project decides to shove that stack straight up your ass! In conclusion, you'll notice that I have included with this letter not a blank piece of notebook paper but a blank piece of toilet paper.

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I am enclosing the next page from my journal. I am not a published author, nor do I aspire to be. I am quite happy as a housewife who spends her days cleaning the house, watching TV and playing video games. In my journal, which I keep hidden even from my husband, I write my fears, observations and lessons learned. When I am angry I turn to this book to rant about my feelings.... I intend someday to give it to my children in the hopes that they can glean something useful from its pages.

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Your page found me deep in a residential drug treatment program.... As just one in a chain of readers, I am unable to detach the page as suggested. So I am sending the middle two pages of my marble composition treatment journal instead. With the front half of my journal being used for entries and the back containing notes on the process of treatment, the middle is where my thoughts will meet.

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The empty page allows me to rid myself of pain. It helps me work through problems. It comforts me on long, sleepless nights.... My mother made the grave mistake of marrying a sociopathic pedophile when I was three. My older sister was five, and my younger sister was en route. I was raised in an environment that did not allow anyone in but us five. If anyone made a friend, or if a teacher started asking too many questions, we moved. We'd move every three months to a year. I can't count the number of houses I have lived in. My ability to openly communicate was greatly inhibited. This perhaps led to my love of the empty page.... At 39 I believe I have finally come to a place where peace of mind is at least possible. I have had a most eventful life, full of twists and turns, never truly allowing for much breathing space. But it has certainly been enlightening to realize that I caused a large part of my unrest. I can allow myself to rest. I may never be able to control the world that I live in, but I can control me. The simplicity of that realization was mind-boggling but has since made me whole. That and the empty pages that have so willingly collected have held safe my very soul, and I think that I will be just fine, thank you very much.

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Are you tempted to write on these pages? Do you smell them as soon as you get them? I would. You know, the way children in school used to smell the mimeographed pages of a test.

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I've owned the notebook that this piece of paper came from since eighth grade. It was given to me by a friend and titled Special Memories. I've used it to write down memories and send special letters. I use the paper sparingly because I want to always have a place to add a memory. I have an excellent memory now, and I fear that I will lose it in my old age. I love my memories, so I use the notebook as a precaution.

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I received a piece of paper from a soldier in Iraq. He taught me how to write the Arabic word for ghost.

I received paper from a police badge collector. He wrote, "From one collector to another!" and included his business card, which lists his occupation as Police Badge Collector.

I received paper from someone who knew Anne Frank.

I received paper from an "ex-American" who took the opportunity to write a manifesto against a country he hates. After detailing the crimes against humanity that America has perpetrated--"You could have used your wealth and power to help the rest of the world instead of robbing and killing and bringing the world to the brink of Armageddon"--he ended his letter with, "For me, this blank page represents what America could have been, but now it's too late."

I received paper from Marines, landscape architects, single mothers, self-described pot-smoking losers....

My favorite? A drawing from a three-year-old who found his parents' issue and instinctively filled the empty page. He drew a mountain.

So what now? Has the blank page run its course in my life? There was a time when I thought the collection might start to move in other directions: paper from dead writers, photo paper from photographers, blank canvases. I've thought about conducting interviews and then editing out all the speaking so all that would remain would be the breathing. Imagine that: the music of a great poet's silence, the sounds of what a politician isn't saying. Or those moments in a symphony when all that can be heard is the conductor's baton.

There's limitless emptiness to be harvested: the lenses of glasses and cameras, unused condoms, typewriter ribbons and ink cartridges and pen refills, chopsticks that are still connected at the top (and unbroken fortune cookies, too), syringes, gasoline.... Who knows? Maybe I will pursue some of that one day. But for now I've got a stack of my own empty paper staring back at me. I'm about to finish my second book, and I'm starting to think of ideas for what to do next. The same old questions are back: Who am I? Why do I do what I do? Is this a good way to live?

I feel like filling pages.

Naked Page

Raw Data

Overall responses.....................................................286+

Readers who sent back the naked page still naked.....................78

Readers who sent in their own naked pages.....................41

Responses from aspiring writers................................18

Responses from incarcerated readers................................17

Readers asking for advice.................................8

Readers inspired by the project to start or resume writing.................7

Readers complaining that only one side of the page was blank...............3

Readers asking for a blank sheet of the author's paper.....................2

Country songs inspired by the project ("Sunday Mornin'")..................1

Responses with Three's Company return address labels................1

Responses written on Hello Kitty stationery.............................1

Naked pages covered entirely in Wite-Out....................................1