How's that for a headline? Kind of grabs you, huh? I wish it was mine, or ours. But it's not -- it's the headline of the Editor's Note in the new issue of Fence. Which features, you guessed it, both fiction and, at least on the cover, tits.
This brings to mind my previous post about our review in New Pages and the use of the word "Maxim-esque", which brought on a slew of "youthfully masculine" comments by fellow Barrelhousers and guests alike, all commenting on the possibilities available, should we fully embrace our "Maxim-esque" potential (sample grab, from Most Valuable Blogger TMC: "This month in Barrelhouse: Never before seen photos of Flannery O'Connor! A good man may be hard to find, but we had no problem finding one bad girl!").
Anyway, goddam if Fence didn't beat us to it.
So what is Fence, a much more established, less youthfully masculine mag, edited by a woman, doing with a cover full of tits? Editor Rebecca Wolf explains:
Tits and giggles, really, when it comes right down to it, and perhaps more tits than giggles. Metaphorically speaking, it's tits that make us want to buy something, whether it be a journal or a car or a handbag or a sweater for a baby -- if tits can be made to stand in for the quotient of glamour, or the promise of effulgence, or the metronomic catapult of image saturation: one eye on the tit back at the tit back at your eye. Tits equals extra. Tits equals vibration. Tits equals fiction! Tits equals valley and leverage, glen and demonstration. Tits equals hot food for the rest of your life.
Tits and giggles. Who are we to argue with that?
2 comments:
Ye shall fever and quake at (the advertising power of) the tits.
I think that's in the Bible somewhere.
Ya know, it's shameless and I'm almost reluctant to admit this, but I would be about 200 times more likely to pick up a specific literary journal if the cover was like that.
Then again, i'm a friend of the maxim-esque guys at Barrelhouse, so I guess that's no shock.
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