'Our Essayists Have Defected'

At the bottom of a box of odds and ends I found a printout of an essay published more than eighteen years ago at a site called Truthdig. I don’t remember reading it but must have found it interesting. The author is Cristina Nehring (about whom I know nothing else), her the title is “What’s Wrong With the American Essay” and you can still read it online. It’s pure provocation: “The problem, of course, is not merely our essayists; it’s our culture. We have grown terribly—if somewhat hypocritically—weary of larger truths. The smarter and more intellectual we count ourselves, the more adamantly we insist that there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as general human experience, that everything is plural and relative and therefore undiscussable. Of course, everything is plural, everything is arguable, and there are limits to what we can know about other persons, other cultures, other genders. But there is also a limit to such humility; there is a point at which it becomes narcissism…