A true first edition of The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence Between Griffin & Sabine Concludes by Nick Bantok.
Written and illustrated by Nick Bantock. First edition, 1993. Chronicle Books, San Francisco.
From the Globe and Mail/Canada review of The Pharos Gate, the last Griffin & Sabine book, published in 2016:
"Twenty-five years ago this summer, an unusual postcard arrived on the doorstep of a lonely young man’s London flat. The recipient, Griffin Moss, was himself a maker of postcards, while the sender, Sabine Strohem, designed postage stamps for a tiny chain of islands in the South Pacific absent from even the most detailed of maps.
Although they’d never met in person, Sabine said she’d “been watching [Griffin’s] art for many years” and, when pressed, explained that she, on occasion, shares his vision: “When you draw and paint, I see what you’re doing while you do it.”
This marked the start of an “extraordinary correspondence” and one of contemporary literature’s most fanciful love affairs – one that spanned continents, history, and even, perhaps, parallel universes."
Griffin & Sabine, Sabine's Notebook, and The Golden Mean comprise a trilogy which Bantock followed with the Morning Star Trilogy - The Gryphon, Alexandria, and Morning Star. The Pharos Gate, published in 2016, bridged the two trilogies.
In The Golden Mean, as the first two books, We're given the vicarious pleasure of reading Griffin & Sabine's mail. Their correspondence is integral to the books; the postcards are faithfully reproduced, the letters in their envelopes are affixed to the pages.
Artist and writer Nick Bantock (1949- ) was born in England but lives and works in Canada.
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Condition*: Fine/Fine. A true first edition, first published in the United States. All the letters are present.
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