As scandals engulfed the National Football League, The New Yorker magazine’s cover that appeared on newsstands last week showed a player being chased down the field by police officers.

During the height of the demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., last month, its cover depicted protesters with their hands raised, illuminated by the harsh glare of floodlights.

And early this year, as the Winter Olympics got underway in Sochi, Russia, the cover lampooned Vladimir V. Putin as a figure skater being assessed by five judges — all of them Mr. Putin.

Those three images, among others, signal a shift in The New Yorker’s cover art toward the topical and provocative.

For most of its existence, the magazine specialized in covers that its current editor, David Remnick, characterized, with some notable exceptions, as “a lot of abandoned beach houses, bowls of fruit and covers reflecting the change of seasons.”

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No one denies that Donna Tartt has written the “It novel” of the year, a runaway best-seller that won her the Pulitzer Prize. But some of the self-appointed high priests of literary criticism—at The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Paris Review—are deeply dismayed by The Goldfinch and its success.

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