You are only as good a fiction writer as your essays

On why you should explore this form

The Essay Liberation Front¹

I start with a hypothesis I’m convinced is absolutely right: if more Anglophone writers wrote essays, if more presses regularly published them, the literary landscape in the language of the Bard would be much more intellectually exciting. Because if we wrote more essays fewer of us interested in writing nonfiction would try our hand at solipsistic memoirs.² And what’s more, if more of us wrote essays, we would read fewer mind-numbing clickbait (opinion) pieces by comment bots. A win on all fronts.

But then, this form in Anglophonia isn’t very popular, not as much as fiction, memoirs and opinion pieces. This is radically different from what goes on in the Hispanic, French, Italian, and German literary scenes, to name just some. These are literary landscapes where the essay occupies a central place. Some of the most renowned pens in these languages have taken the essay to unexpected places. Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Herta Müller, anyone? So why haven’t …