Abstract
In Nick Bantock’s epistolary novel Griffin and Sabine (1991), postcard artist Griffin Moss receives a mysterious and unexpected postcard from stamp designer Sabine Strohem, a woman who claims to be able to see whatever he draws as he draws it, though she lives thousands of miles away and they have never met. While the mystery of Sabine’s existence and cliffhanger endings (Griffin is reported missing), offer elements of a compelling narrative, it is arguable that the best-selling status and literary import of this work has to do with the visual reproduction and tactile presentation of the correspondence. The entire narrative is presented through nineteen pieces of mail - fifteen postcards and four letters that include removable pieces of paper stuffed inside attached envelopes. This experimental essay, written in the form of a letter, explores how the materiality of mail, reproduced as ephemera in literary projects such as The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, impacts the telling of an epistolary story, opening for Hawkins, as reader-writer, queer possibility. Through a rhetorical and phenomenological examination that focuses on the work of the letter, the wonder, curiosity, excitement, and most importantly the desire contained in Bantock’s book series is remade here through language - both in terms of content and the form of the piece.
