"As Near as I can figure an essay can be...a query, a reminiscence, a persuasive tract, an exploration; it can look inward or outward; it can crack a lot of jokes. What it need not be is objective. An essay can certainly present facts and advocate a position, but that seems quite different from objectivity, whereby a writer just delivers information, adding nothing in the process. Instead, essays take their tone and momentum from the explicit presence of the writer in them and the distinctiveness of each writer's perspective. That makes essays definitely subjective-- not in the skewed, unfair sense of subjectivity, but in the sense that essays are voncersations, and they should have all the nuances and attitude that any conversation has. I'm Sure that's why newspapers so rarely generate great essays: even in the essay-allowed zone of a newspaper, the heavy breath of Objective Newspaper Reporting is always blowing down the writer's neck. And certainly there is no prescribed tone that is "correct" for essays. Sometimes it seems that they have a sameness of manner, a kind of earnest, hand writing solemnity. Is this neccesary? I don't think so. Many of the essays that intrigued me this year were funny, or unusually structured, or tonally adventurous -- in otherwords, not typical in sound or shape. wht mattered was they conveyed the writere's journy, and did it intelligently, gracefully, honestly, and with whatever voice or shape fit best."--Susan Orlean
