Blogging Woolf

It doesn’t rank up there with the 1937 cover of Time magazine, but Virginia Woolf appears on the cover of the Dec. 5 issue of The New Yorker—if you look carefully.

Titled “Black Friday,” the cover by Daniel Clowes shows a middle-aged bespectacled man entering a book store, apparently looking for . . . books. Hmm, go figure.

But all that meets the eye are sundry gadgets and tchotchkes, literary accessories and images: e-readers and reading lamps, t-shirts and lunchboxes. (I think that’s Emily Dickinson gracing the most visible one).

Bobblehead dolls of Shakespeare and Mark Twain sit on top of a bookcase. On a shelf below them, baseball caps are displayed, featuring Tolstoy, Kerouac, Poe and Bronte. And hanging on the wall above them are three tote bags, emblazoned with images of Hemingway, Joyce and Woolf.

The sales clerk assists the bemused customer by pointing to a narrow bottom shelf holding what appear to be the store’s selection of books.

Shop till you drop, right?