Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Nick Bantock is a creator of books whose content is much more than
words alone.  His books are visually exquisite, and often tactile. The
combination of his well-crafted stories, full of mystery, irony,
wordplay, and humor and his haunting, evocative images will long
remain in the memory of anyone who reads them.  They are an
unforgettable and welcome gift from a talented writer, artist, poet and
raconteur.

Nick Bantock will undoubtedly characterize himself as an artist first,
and a writer second, having spent nearly two decades as a freelance
illustrator with 300 book covers to his credit, including novels by
John Updike and Philip Roth, before undertaking his own career as a
writer with the intriguing and phenomonally successful Griffin and
Sabine series..  How that series came about is one of the many things
that we will be talking about during the course of this interview,  as
we cover his various works, including his latest, _The Museum at
Purgatory_.

I ask you to join me in welcoming him here today to inkwell.vue.
  

    
Nick, welcome to inkwell.vue.  There is so much to talk about, I don't
quite know where to start!  I've been looking at a list of your work
at your publicist's Web site, <http://www.fan-dango.com>, and that
list is quite impressive, especially considering that the earliest
publication date listed is 1990.  You have created quite a body of
work in that decade.  Would you tell us, please, what your first book
was, and how you happened to create it?
  

    
Thanks Linda.
Although my background is painting, for many years I earned a living
as an illustrator doing book covers for most of the major British
publishers. A year or so after leaving England and moving to Vancouver
I got involved with a L.A.packager of pop-up books, and one day while
sitting in a hotel lobby listening to a successful author talking about
his next project. I started to think, 'I could do what he's doing, how
come I'm just the service industry?' At that point a little light-bulb
came on over my head, and I said under my breath, "Sod that! I should
do my own books." 
It was that basic.
I headed back to Canada and put together a dummy for a pop-up book
based on the old verse, "There was an old lady who swallowed the fly."
The idea was accepted almost immediately and the book was sold on to
Viking Penguin. Apart from the exhausting slog of the twenty five year
build-up, getting published was relatively painlessly.   
  

    
So there you were, after 25 years, on the verge of becoming an
overnight success!

Then, in 1991, came the first of the series, _Griffin and Sabine_.  On
the Web site, you relate an anecdote from your soon-to-be-released
book, _The Artful Dodger_ about an encounter at your local post
office, and in that anecdote you say, "most everyone knows I'm strange
because they've read the newspaper articles describing the way I got
the concept for Griffin & Sabine at my post box."  Will you relate
that anecdote, and tell us what the newspaper articles said?"
  

    
Ten years ago, I was collecting the mail from my PO box and finding
nothing but brown bills, when I spotted that the guy next to me had a
mysterious looking blue airmail letter with an exotic stamp. I was
overcome with jealousy, and as I walked up the hill questing why no one
sent me letters like that, I considered the desperate act of writing
to myself. Dismissing that notion for obvious reasons, I decided I'd do
better to write two sides of a correspondence in the form of postcards
and letters and turn it into a book. So I did. And Griffin and Sabine
were brought into existence. 
Then:
A year or so ago, I stepped into the post office intending to execute
my daily ritual of checking the mail, saw there were a few people
waiting in line at the counter, nodded a good morning, then turned
ninety degrees to head for my post box. 
        The island I lived on was small and people tended to greet each other
in a friendly fashion. Most everyone knew I'm strange because they've
read the newspaper articles describing the way I got the idea for
Griffin and Sabine while collecting my post. 
        Anyway, so there I was, looking into my box once again to see what
mail it had to offer when I spied through the hole that led to the back
room the eyes and nose of Adele, the postmistress, who was still in
the process of loading up the boxes. Naturally enough, I said, "Hi!"
And she responds with a quiet, equally cheery greeting. I asked, "How
you doing?" And she and I proceed to have a little conversation. It was
at this point that I caught sight of something in my peripheral
vision. I turned slowly to see the other people at the counter staring
at me as if I'd completely lost my marbles. I frowned and then it
dawned on me. They couldn't see or hear the postmistress. From their
position, all they were aware of was that Nick, the guy who got his
brainwaves from his little silver post box, was chatting away to it,
like a hatter at a tea party. 
        I closed my eyes and considered, was I going to try and explain about
the hidden postmistress? No point. I just smilingly exited, thus
confirming what everyone suspected all along.

As for the newspaper articles. When the books took off big time, there
were hundreds of them, everywhee I looked, and the post office on the
island became quite a star.
                
 
  

    
In the _Griffin and Sabine_ series, you take a very, very unusual
approach to an epistolary romance - one that is conducted entirely by
letter - in that you include the actual mail in the book - postage,
postmarks, envelopes and all.  Has any other author taken that unusual
step that you know of, and what sorts of rechnical things did you
encounter in trying to get that published?  What I really want to know
is, how did they get the letters into the envelopes?  Was it a manual
process, or were they able to automate it?
  

    
When I was half-way through working on Griffin and Sabine a friend
who'd seen my dummy phoned and told me that a kid's book had just been
released using the same idea. I had a couple of bad hours till I got to
the book store. However, when I saw The Jolly Postman, I breathed a
sigh of relief--it couldn't have been more different. 
Since the trilogy, there have been a number of books with envelopes
in, but from what I could see most of them were either parodies or they
were appealing to a far more sentimental audience than I was. The
philatelic details were very important. To create a believable
correspondence between a real and unreal place, you have to understand
the real, then corrupt in a believable fashion. 
The process of including envelopes in a book was more of a
psychological than physical problem. Once we'd worked out that real
pre-made envelopes were the way to go, all we had to do was find
someone to glue them in. Little did we realize that it wasn't going to
be a question of ten thousand books each with 4 envelopes, millions of
the things. 
And yes, they were all stuffed manually...I can only that the Goddess
or God of 'stuffers' provided well for his or her devotees.
  

    
I just lost the 'but' from in front of 'millions' at the end of that
last response. Which reminds me that one of the things I did in the
trilogy was to keep-in some of my spelling errors (you'll probably see
a lot more during this interview). By crossing out my handwritten
mistakes (ie. their handwriting) it felt less like 'I' the author, was
imposing on what 'they' the charecters wanted to say to one another.
  

    
There really is a sense in those books that the characters are talking
to one another, which is enhanced, not diminished by the errors and
stray ink marks.  It makes them more real.  

How many books are there in that series?  Are any more planned?
  

    
To date, just the three.
Griffin and Sabine
Sabine's Notebook
The Golden Mean
However I've recently started working on a new trilogy that picks up
from where The Golden Mean has been hanging for seven years.
I'd begun to realize that the charecters and their world, were my
personal mythological arena and I'd lost sight of them. And in so doing
I'd let go of the thread of my first language. I needed to claim them
back. Once I'd come to that insight, the story-symbols started tumbling
out of me, in faster and faster gushes.
  

    
It's very exciting to hear about that new trilogy - especially for those
of us who have been wondering about the addition of that "M" in Sabine's
name that shows up unexpectedly at the end of the last book and left us
wondering whether it was purely coincidental that Griffin's last name also
starts with "M"...

What do you mean when you say "I'd let go of the thread of my first
language?  And what are story-symbols?

I have also been wondering if the Griffin and Sabine trilogy inspired your
readers to start send you letters and postcards with their own mysterious
messages and symbology?
  

    
Hi. I have some questions but I'm going to go out and buy my own copies
of the books first, having spent hours with them in bookstores and at
friends' houses.
  

    
I was cleaning up my books last weekend, sorting through hundreds of
extremely thin children's books, and I came across the "There was an
Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly" pop-up book, and noticed your name.
Although my kids had both enjoyed the book (a bit too much, sadly) I
had never noticed your name before.

And now here you are!
  

    
My first language is the realm of symbols that have taken root within
me (not a conscious choice). The means be which we/I understand the
connecting aspects of the world without having to go through the
plodding process of words and pedantic logic.
Story-symbols--because I work in a mixture of words and images, and
the images are part of the narrative (not illustrations to the text),
the significance of reading the pictures (giving them more time and
study) becomes important to the reader. 
It's probably easier to understand if I use an example. In Griffin and
Sabine there were many visual themes that run as a thread through the
cards. One of these is literally a thread, a cord, a rope, that
represented Griffin's life-line. He hangs on to it and eventually has
to cut it to be free. If you look through the three books you will see
it appearing over and over. Sometimes small like in the kangaroos
pocket, sometimes more dramatically like the rope that holds the upside
down man in the card titled, "The Hung Boy". Once you begin to look at
the connections between the images, you will discover another way of
seeing-reading that feeds the imagination in its own terms. 
I hope that doesn't sound too off-the-wall. It's an old skill, there
in all of us, it's just become partially dormant.
As for the last part of the question. Yes, I recieved vast amounts of
handwritten mail. The dull brown envelopes were at last outnumbered by
the colorful ones.
  

    

Clearly, I am now going to have to get the books out and look again.  And
we will talk more about the images and the connections between them as
this interview progresses.

I was just going to ask you if you could talk a little bit about the
Griffin and Sabine movie that's in the works, but one of your fans beat me
to it:

From goodtruth@juno.com Fri Mar 31 12:29:16 2000
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 16:29:50 -0500
From: Henry B Damon <goodtruth@juno.com>
To: inkwell-hosts@well.com
Subject: Nick Bantock interview

Perhaps Mr. Bantock could comment on any progress with development of his
"Griffin & Sabine" trilogy in Hollywood. Casting? Filming? Release date?

Sincerely,
Henry B. Damon


And I would add to Mr. Damon's inquiry - will it be live action or
animation?
  

    
Let me also interject a couple of hostly notes here:

First, if you are not a WELL member and have questions for Nick Bantock
about the subjects being covered in this interview, please send them to
inkwell-hosts@well.com.  We will see that your question is included.

Second, a note to WELL members:  please do not use pseuds - people who are
reading outside the WELL cannot look at your bio to see who you really
are, and especially do not use pseuds that imply you are someone you are
not!  (Yes, I am speaking to you, esau!)

I now return you to the Nick Bantock interview...
  

    
My apologies.
  

    
Again.
  

    
Ben Fong Franz Scott (esau),
Thanks for multipersonalitized diversion. Stops me from getting too
esoteric.

Fom,
Be my guest, buy as many as you like!

Henry Damon,
Hollywood, being what it is, who knows. But we have a good script
writer in Rick Ramage and all being well we hope we'll be able to get
moving later this year. Out of curiosity, if anyone has thoughts on
who'd make a good Griffin and a good Sabine, please suggest away.
  

    
Gwyneth Paltrow as Sabine!  Or Chloe Sevigny.  Do we know how old she
is?  Maybe Dianne Wiest if she's middle-aged.  Funny how I see her as a
blonde.

Griffin...I don't know.  I want to say Albert Finney or Sean Connery
or John Lithgow or Harrison Ford, but that may be older than you see
him.  I guess he's young, because he's not grounded yet.  So maybe
somebody young and nervous, likely to bolt at any moment.  Who is that?
 Jude Law?  
  

    
Please please don't let it be a 60-ish guy and a 20-ish woman like in so
many Hollywood movies.
  

    

I think it begs to be animated.
  

    
Welcome to the Well, Nick!

I worked at Chronicle Books in the heady days when the G&S trilogy was
first published. It was so exciting - we all went nuts over Nick's
exquisite dummies and the whole place would crowd around when more of his
artwork came in. And the wild success of the books was pretty thrilling,
too.
  

    
fom, you shouldn't have said it out loud. Now it'll be Harrison Ford and
Natalie Portman.
  

    


Sir John Gielgud and Anna Paquin!
  

    




Richard Farnsworth and Madonna's latest spawn!