Literary Cheesecake

ON THE INSIDE, the Summer 2005 issue of the New York-based literary journal Fence, which hit newsstands earlier this month, is business as usual. Established authors and poets jockey for space with showboating upstarts in the avant-garde biannual's pages, while novelists Jonathan Lethem and Rick Moody, among others, contribute to a symposium on contemporary fiction. So what's with the un-belletristic cover photo (above)? Is the bare-breasted, lip-pierced young woman who invites us to browse the journal a fan of innovative prose, perhaps? A hunch-driven search of SuicideGirls.com, a website devoted to self-submitted pin-up shots of punk rockers, revealed that although the litmag's model, Quinne, may dig ''Lolita," she's also a fan of ''Harry Potter" and ''The Da Vinci Code"- a stimulating bit of sleuthing that did nothing to explain the cheesecake cover. Curious, I phoned Fence editor Rebecca Wolff at home in Hudson, N.Y.

''There's been a lot of nattering about the new issue's cover on literary blogs, along the lines of 'What a desperate bid for attention,' not to mention 'How exploitative,' but I'm trying to ignore it," said Wolff. ''Yes, the cover is an experiment in marketing a literary journal - I'm closely monitoring point-of-purchase sales - but of course it's not experimental at all, since it's long been proven that sex sells."

So is there a connection between Fence and the Suicide Girls? ''No, our managing editor contacted the website and they donated an image," said Wolff. But upon reflection, she added: ''Like the Suicide Girls, our contributors are self-selecting themselves to enter into a realm-literature-that people have a lot of preconceived notions about, but they're doing it in a way that's personally right for them. What Fence looks for in a writer is the same thing the Suicide Girls look for in a member of their community-somebody who's answering strictly to themselves."

Joshua Glenn is associate editor of Ideas. E-mail glenn@globe.com.