This article posits that Werther substantially revises the epistolary form made standard by the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Acts of miscommunication dominate the novel: letters are sent but never received. Such misdirections create inadequate models of exchange and fractured communities of people, which in turn produce isolation and despair great enough to influence Werther's suicide. Of course Werther does not kill himself because he is a bad letter writer, yet the novel's, and Werther's, departures from the conventions of epistolarity deserve attention for the ways in which they transform the genre. By examining the metaphors and literalizations of writing and exchange in the novel, I reveal a failed postal system governing the characters and text.