You know things are grim when Edgar Allan Poe is the man of the hour. The master of the macabre’s Masque of the Red Death graces the cover of The New Yorker this week, imagined by artist Robert Risko in “Red Death This Week” as an all-too-realistically-scary allegory for the chaos and death (of a sort) that has stalked the stock markets these past few weeks. If you don’t know the story (or Poe in general), I hate to tell you this, but the ending is not pretty.

If you prefer your Poe on the escapist side, instead of confronting our terrifying reality you can make your very own paper Poe. Yes, an artist named Brian Gubicza has made a pattern available free here (click on the blue words E.A. Coobie under the picture to download the PDF). Just print it out and fold it up–which might only work if you’re clever, since there are no directions. If you succeed (huzzah!), take a picture and send it to us support[at]dailylit[dot]com]!

In either case, DailyLit is here to help. We have lots of Poe, so you can hunker down at home and hide from the Red Death/recession. With your paper Poe for company!

Thanks to GalleyCat for the New Yorker cover and Jacket Copy for the foldable Poe.

• Posted on 14 October, 2008
  by MaggieH
• Category
  General