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...