[单项选择]

We sometimes hear that essays are an old-fashioned form, that so-and-so is the "last essayist", but the facts of the marketplace argue quite otherwise. Essays of nearly any kind are so much easier than short stories for a writer to sell, so many more see print, it’s strange that though two fine anthologies (collections) remain that publish the year’s best stories, no comparable collection exists for essays. Such changes in the reading public’s taste aren’t always to the good, needless to say. The art of telling stories predated even cave painting, surely; and if we ever find ourselves living in caves again, it (with painting and drumming) will be the only art left, after movies, novels, photography, essays, biography, and all the rest have gone down the drain--the art to build from.
Essays, however, hang somewhere on a line between two sturdy poles: this is what I think, and this is what I am. Autobiographies which aren’t novels are
A. careful arrangement and organization of chief ideas
B. remarkable concision and meaningful presentation
C. improbable condensation to any shorter accounts
D. flashes of wit and enlightenment of argumentation