An Extraordinary Correspondence -- Author Sends His Mystery Home With Books Made Of Letters, Cards, And Stamps

The mystery continues - and fans of the tantalizing, long-distance romance between Griffin and Sabine would have it no other way.

"I waited, but you did not return on the 23rd . . . What happened? Where are you? Write to me, Griffin," is the plaintive closing plea in "Sabine's Notebook" (Chronicle Books, $17.95), the second volume in an "extraordinary correspondence" created by artist Nick Bantock.

That hook into the final volume in a trilogy is just as enticing as the closing of "Griffin & Sabine" (Chronicle Books, $16.95), the 1991 book that became a word-of-mouth publishing phenomenon and even today is No. 10 on The New York Times bestseller list - just two notches below the newly released "Sabine's Notebook."

The first book, composed entirely of cards and letters exchanged by London postcard artist Griffin Moss and the mysterious Sabine Strohem, a postage-stamp designer living on a South Pacific archipelago, ends abruptly with Griffin claiming, "This whole affair has gotten too intense. Too real."

Seemingly about to lose his mind, he claims to have invented Sabine, that the postcards, the stamps, even the "Sicmon Islands" where she lives, are all products of his fevered imagination. He closes with: "Before it takes me over it has to stop. Goodbye."

But just as the reader is about to offer a personal plea - "Noooooo!" - Sabine responds with a final postcard: "Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened . . . If you will not join me - then I shall come to you."

Whew!

The epistolary relationship continues in "Sabine's Notebook," and it is even more frustrating: The addled Griffin, fearful of learning the truth - is Sabine real? did he invent her? - bolts before she arrives. She stays at his studio, though, and the correspondence continues while he rambles the globe - Dublin, Florence, Kyoto, Australia - trying to summon the courage to confront her.

Will we ever learn the truth about Griffin and Sabine?

"The next book is the ending - there's not going to be a `Son of' or `Daughter of,' " said a smiling Nick Bantock during a recent visit to Seattle. "But if I tied the thing up with a pretty pink bow, not only would I be disgusted, but in the long run, everyone else would be, too. I believe the mystery goes on, but . . ."

It's a safe bet that when "The Golden Mean" is released next October, the legion of fans entranced by the first two volumes will mount an invasion of bookstores in hopes of resolving the same questions that are torturing Griffin. But for now, all Bantock will say is that William Butler Yeats' haunting poem, "The Second Coming," is a key.

(Remember that from English class? It's the one that opens, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" - and concludes with the "rough beast" slouching toward Bethlehem.)

There's been no slouching for Bantock since Griffin and Sabine captured the public imagination more than a year ago. Publicity tours, book signings, and magazine interviews have injected a new level of activity in the life the slim, 43-year-old artist, who normally only shuttles between his studio and the home he shares with his wife and four young children on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, B.C.

Unexpected success has a way of changing things. Both Bantock and his publisher, San Francisco-based Chronicle Books, thought they might have the makings of a low-key but long-term cult favorite when "Griffin & Sabine" was published. The cult, however, rapidly became the mainstream: So far, the book has sold more than 250,000 copies, and "Sabine's Notebook" is already up to 225,000 copies in its fourth printing.

"This has very much been an independent-bookstore coup. It has been virtually all word-of-mouth by booksellers that has made it happen," said Bantock.

The quality that delights booksellers and customers alike is the books' unique blend of words, images and objects; they demand to be examined, felt, mused about - and examined again. Sabine's cards and letters are adorned with stamps she has designed for the Sicmon Islands; Griffin's quirky cards and envelopes are the product of his own postcard and stationery-design business.

The envelopes have to be opened and the letters extracted - the guilty pleasure of reading someone else's mail is a chief attraction - and Sabine's cryptic notes and images fill the margins of some pages. It is an odd pair of books to have been conceived in the post office on tiny Bowen Island, where Bantock and his wife moved in 1987 after emigrating from their native England.

Watching his neighbors receive exotically stamped letters while sorting through his own junk mail, Bantock got to thinking: "What, I wondered, would be the most perfect letter you could receive?"

Within 10 minutes on the stroll back to his home, he had his answer: a letter - better yet, a correspondence - that would combine anticipation, romance and mystery.

"I had to start with what I knew: what it means to be a self-conscious, lonely artist - but I couldn't leave it at that or it would simply have been self-indulgent autobiography, and I didn't want that," said Bantock. "Then, I had to push him off and develop this other person, who also is not dissimilar to me."

So, we have a pair of artists with a penchant for originality - not unlike the Nick Bantock who graduated from art school in England and developed a career designing jackets for "difficult" books that didn't fit into easy visual categories. Since moving to Canada, he also has designed a number of pop-up books for Viking ("Jabberwocky," "There Was an Old Lady," "The Walrus and the Carpenter").

But the correspondence between Griffin and Sabine was a totally new venture - and one he is not likely to repeat. "I think there has to be a degree of integrity in this - you can't milk it endlessly," said Bantock. "I always try to remember what Picasso said: `I'll steal ideas from anyone - but not myself.' "