This is an extract from A Pound of Paper by John Baxter, a book which i had finally read through few weeks ago.
Many People, it seems, are convinced that the front endpaper - the blank page at the beginning of a book - exists to be written on. Ladies and gentlemen, the free endpaper is not there to scribble on, or otherwise, as it used to say on computer cards when computers used cards, 'tear, fold, spindle or mutilate'. The endpaper has the same significance in a book as the silences in a Pinter play, the gaps between movement in a Beethoven quartet or the unpainted canvas of one of Bacon's screaming popes. Between the gaudiness of the dust wrapper and the solemnity of the text, it provides a beat.
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