“Red Death On Wall Street”

 

The new issue of The New Yorker came in the mail today.  I haven’t read it yet, but I love this cover art: “Red Death on Wall Street,” by Robert Risko.  It’s a combination of Edgar Allan Poe’s great story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” and the current turbulence in the economy. 

Here, Poe’s spectre of the Grim Reaper, instead of assailing a cloistered elite of revelers during a gruesome plague, appears to a bunch of stockbrokers, bringing no less horrific a brand of supernatural terror.  Literary, timely, and topical?  That’s why I read The New Yorker.  They need more stuff like this.  My American Lit. classes will be reading this story next week, and this cover will make the perfect visual aid.