My favorite essays feel like surprising chemical reactions: Their materials combine into something novel and combustible. The French philosopher Roland Barthes’s 1957 essay “The World of Wrestling,” which examines the “amplification of the tragic masks” in professional (fake) grappling, certainly fits this category. So does an article in The Atlantic this week , in which the staff writer Gal Beckerman invokes Barthes’ essay to explain the symbolic importance of UFC 250, the gaudy display of