I’ve often wondered what an essay is—how it differs from fiction, for example, or prose-poetry, or even from reporting. In 2010, many writers and most publishers will tell you that it is the marketing of “essays” and “fiction” that determines the difference between those genres, rather than anything intrinsic to their content or form. In the event, there seems to be a blasé disdain among imaginative writers, and even among some scholarly ones, for the drawing of distinctions—not only between essay and fiction but also between “truth” and “fact.” (There is no such confusion among print publishers of trade books, of course: they know that memoirs sell, fiction might, and essays don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.)

Does anyone else find...

An impish, frisky conversation about what lies between the essay and every other kind of writing led a trio of panelists to disagree, but amiably, at Scandinavia House on Saturday during a new day of the World Voices Festival.

In passing, the novelist and panelist Peter Schneider complained that the essay has been harmed by the bloggers, who opine, opine, and opine, skirting the facts and dangling their "huge egos." Of course, his more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, not to mention essays, leave Schneider free of culpability--at least, that kind. "Writing," he said, "is an adventure." With a steadfast grin, he added, "You don't know at the outset where you are going!"

I don't know, either.

Asks a man across from me on the train just...