Pesky Pages

Maud Newton's recent post...

It, like, looks like a book, but without the pesky pages
Ostensibly "literate handbags," which "reclassify the beauty of vintage books by crafting their covers into distinctive purses," are represented by a shot of a purse made from James Michener's Hawaii.

...couldn't help but remind me of Eugene Pota, Joseph Heller's protagonist (and alter ego) in Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, which I just read recently. Pota, an aging author seeking to recapture the fading glory of his debut novel with one last great work, finds himself utterly devoid of good ideas. The best thing he can come up with is the title A Sexual Biography of my Wife, which sounds quite intriguing; trouble is, Pota has absolutely no idea what the story would be about. His agent jokingly suggests that they publish a book with that title stamped in big letters on the cover, with nothing but blank pages inside. "Pesky pages", indeed!