John Green, YA author of the worldwide best-seller The Fault in Our Stars, made a striking claim in a recent interview I listened to on the New York Times. He said that writing non-fiction about tuberculosis requires no personal connection to the disease, but writing fiction that works demands bringing your own grief, loss, tenderness, and capacity to love with you to the work. At first glance, he seems to have got this backwards. Surely writing personal essays and memoirs require more...