The current edition of "Reading Room," a monthly journal published under the auspices of the Hunan Province News and Publication Bureau -- the provincial censorship organ -- features two long, somewhat daring essays.
That is not exactly the question that Robert D. Kaplan addresses in "The Coming Anarchy," his analytically daring collection of essays on the face of global things to come, but it lurks nonetheless.
Rag is a free tabloid that's witty, perceptive and accessible and covers all those up-and-coming young designers and cool boutiques that you should really know about but were put off because this kind of stuff usually gets covered in abstract, turgid essays and "daring" photo shoots in pointless glossies like Tank, Pop and Another Magazine that no-one, not even their subeditor, can comprehend.
Madonna dares to reveal one very personal truth in an essay for "The Daring Issue" of Harper's Bazaar: When she was young and trying to make it in New York City, she was raped at knifepoint. .
Still, the essay was a daring bit of audacity on the part of an obscure young writer with two novels to his name.
"Diary of a Bad Year" takes a daring form: Señor C's essays occupy the bulk of each page, more or less, but running beneath them, like the news crawl on a TV screen, are what read like short diary entries by Señor C and by Anya, which offer a running commentary on the developing relationship of employer and employee, and which convey the plot of the novel, such as it is.
It was rumoured that he had extended his coffee mug to the author of a disappointing essay, held his gaze, daring him to act, and when he didn't, let it smash on the floor.
This is not merely a journal of funny and daring, if at times unbearably whimsical, fiction and essays and art.
