Dying All the Time

We are on the cusp of the Halloween holidays, so I feel the need to complete my account of this series of four GLP comics Yost made as illustrations of “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. This is the final panel, with a grim title appropriate for the denouement of the story. The title is a line from the song “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones, a song less gory than the Poe story, yet it still contains a certain measure of the melancholy of human transience. The art for today’s comic was eventually used for a book cover by Red Tower Books.

When Cecil W. Letson was an editor with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, he commissioned Yost’s work for six book covers, including the cover of a 1986 edition of The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf. Unfortunately, none of those six books were published. After the Wolfe project fell apart, Letson left HBJ to work a brief stint as an executive editor for Oxford University Press. It was a time he later described as “three months of crazy” in an interview with Publishers Weekly (he actually stayed at Oxford for eleven months).

While still working for Oxford University Press, Letson started the Red Tower Books and Coffee Club, a subscription service that specialized in tomes of fantasy and horror accompanied by bags of whole bean coffee suitable for making espresso. When Letson moved to David R. Godine as editorial director, Red Tower began publishing its own line of books: tales of terror and strange adventures, ghost stories, and other accounts of marvelous occurrences.

It is an oft-repeated story that Letson, for various outlandish reasons, derived the symbol for Red Tower Books from the Random House logo, but that story may not be true. Random House never raised the issue of trademark infringement, and Red Tower stopped publishing books in 2002. Coffee with the Red Tower label was produced until 2014.

…and I made new doodads to decorate the Official 2022 Geranium Lake Properties Calendar.

Is this concrete all around or is it in my head?

Another Bowie song, “All the Young Dudes” (sixth on Yost’s list of his twelve favorite Bowie songs), provided the title/caption for today’s GLP comic. David Bowie wrote and produced the song for Mott the Hoople, and Ian Hunter provided the inspired lead vocals that launched the song into rock & roll history.

This is the third in the series of Yost’s interpretation of “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. The publisher Cecil W. Letson (1944-2018) wanted to use the series for a cover of a reprint edition of Poe’s stories, using the same four-spot design as the cover for the Virginia Woolf book. Letson, when he worked for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, was the editor who commissioned Yost’s work for several book covers, although none of the books made it to publication.

Is there life on Mars?

August is the month when the Ta Gosan Jacin specially honors a Monster-Maker, and in 1989, they chose Edgar Allan Poe. Yost devoted four panels of Geranium Lake Properties to illustrate Poe’s “The Mask of the Red Death”. The titles/captions for the panels in the series are lines from songs by Donovan, Mott the Hoople, the Rolling Stones, and here today is Yost’s fourth favorite song by David Bowie. (We know it’s his fourth favorite because he made a numbered list of his twelve favorite Bowie songs, the twelfth song alternated between “Station to Station” and “Diamond Dogs”. I have in my possession a mixtape of the dozen (with “Diamond Dogs” in the twelfth spot) made by Yost on cassette. He made many copies of the cassette and gave them to friends and strangers. The tape seems to be intact but I have no way of playing it.)

In past years, the Monster Club has chosen Arthur Machen, H. P. Lovecraft, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Harryhausen and Guillermo del Toro as Monster-Makers. Yost was named the Monster-Maker for August 2004.

Station to Station is possibly my favorite David Bowie album; I have it on vinyl because I am old and most of my music is on vinyl.

So Many Different People To Be

I was not expecting an e-mail from Khoelisa Ishlanye-Oltamo, Grand Doyenne of the Ta Gosan Jacin (what we non-members call the Monster Club). I did not think it was likely that I would ever hear from anyone who is actually a member of the club, much less the president. My knowledge of the organization comes from what Yost (who became a member in 1983, or late in 1982) wrote in his notebooks, which was not much. Altogether, there is very little information outsiders can know about the Ta Gosan Jacin. We do not know if they created the Eleven Monsters holiday or if they are maintaining a pre-existent tradition. They get together for three (or maybe four) days every August to make the Monster List. The Monster List consists of eleven monsters chosen for the coming year, one for each month, from September through July. It is not clear to me (or anyone outside the club) if the Eleven Monsters holiday is celebrated during those few days in August or every month of the year. The Grand Doyenne let me know that the monster chosen for September 2021 is Cernunnos, the Horned God. I appreciate that tiny bit of privileged knowledge, even though I don’t know what to do with it (and September is nearly over). The purpose of the Monster List is a secret to all but the members of the Ta Gosan Jacin.

The Grand Doyenne also let me know that the August dates for the Eleven Monster Holiday in the Official 2021 GLP Calendar are wrong. I knew that already, or more accurately, I knew it was likely that the dates were wrong. I am not a member of the monster club, I am not allowed to know the chosen dates for the Eleven Monster holiday, so I arbitrarily picked some days in August that have significance for me. Those days will continue to be the dates of the Eleven Monster holiday in the Official GLP Calendar until that time, if ever, the Ta Gosan Jacin decides to let me know something different.

Here’s the post about the color pink. Which is a color for terror. (Halloween is coming!) And kudos (I think maybe it is a thing I should do, give out kudos) to whomever recognized the title of today’s post as a line from “Season of the Witch” by Donovan.