We approach nonfiction at a much different level than we approach fiction or poetry or drama: that there's almost no room for metaphor. We expect the "I" in any nonfiction text to be an autobiographical "I" when there is a history in the essay of the "I" being a persona.

I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.

I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example.

The whole movement of an essay is propelled by a fundamentally human impulse to want to figure things out.

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment. Also, roughly around the time we were doing this fact-checking. And I never really understood why people think what nonfiction's job is to give them information as opposed to something else.

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.