Last week at The Guardian, Kyle Chayka stuck up for all tote bag carrying dudes:

With apologies to Freud, my tote obsession has nothing to do with purse envy. Don’t call it a “murse” or a “man-bag”, two derogatory terms for what is clearly its own practical, potent genre. It is time for gentlemen everywhere to embrace this necessary vessel and overcome their shame, to shout from the rooftops: I’m a tote bagger, and I am proud.

I’m also a proud tote bagger, but thought that Chayka’s article presented the opportunity to look at something bigger, namely how the tote bag industry (is there actually a tote bag industry? There should be) might want to dedicate an entire team of researchers and marketers to the literary world. Book people are to tote bags what Jewish grandparents in Boca are to Denny’s early bird specials. What I’m trying to say is that a lot of children of tote bag manufactures have probably paid for college thanks to big publishers basically having an entire portion of their budget dedicated to buys tote bags they can give out.

We’ve explored what your literary tote bag choice says about you, but now we’re wondering which literary tote you think is the finest of them all. Is it that old Open City bag you don’t remember bringing home? Maybe it’s that Melville House “I would prefer not to” bag that people always ask what, exactly you’d prefer not to, and you just smirk and mumble “Philistine” under your breath. The n+1 bag you got when you interned for them? Or is it a bag from your favorite indie bookstore? We want to know what the greatest literary tote bag of them all is.

Image: Liberty via Graywolf Press

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