Robert, a thirtysomething insurance adjuster who works nearby, brings three used classics to Book Traders Book Store to exchange. When he gets in return a book with blank pages, he believes it to be an error. Nancy, the store owner and about Robert’s age, supplies him with another book, this one also blank. Even as Robert protests, satisfied and willfully oblivious customers come in to trade for more blank books.
Finally, Robert fights back: armed with pens and ultimately a typewriter, he occupies the store and recreates—to the best of his recollection—the classic novels that Nancy and her college-age nephew, Toto, have been disemboweling and replacing with white pages.