In this excerpt from “Self on a Shelf,” Sara Levine spends a great deal of time answering the same question for a number of other writers:  descriptions of Joan Didion (“fair”) and Stanley Elkin (“the biggest egotist of an essayist in town”) are intermingled with quotations from and descriptions of such names as Phillip Lopate, Edward Hoagland, and Scott Russell Sanders. In this essay about personality and the role of one’s self in the essay, Levine says precious little about herself. Nevertheless, as Hoagland describes, each essay has an inherent “combination of personality and originality and energetic loose ends that stand up…and cannot be brushed down;” Levine’s reveals herself in her work through her colorful descriptions of other writers.

From the beginning of the excerpt to the end, Levine drops a steady stream of metaphors and similes to describe passages of writing that refer to the art of making an impression through writing. Didion’s passage from “Why I Write” becomes a “salesperson in the perfume department, sidling up and splashing you with candor,” and Levine refers to her own revealing of one of Stanley Elkins’ writing techniques as “pulling down the author’s underwear.” Levine’s writing is full enough of personality that it gives character even to the existing characters of other writers. Her “self” is a descriptive and private one; her persona gives only furtive intimations of itself, hiding behind the miniature anecdotal comparisons she draws between what she herself has experienced and what she has read of others.

Although Levine does not quite describe herself or her own writing, her choices of passages to complement her essay are subtle road signs directing the reader through the privacy of Levine’s personality. That she quotes Didion’s passage referring to writing as “an aggressive, even hostile act” displays a sense of agreement between the two writers. She is an aggressive and energetic writer, lighthearted and humorous in her textual illustrations of other people (“a cog in the wheel, a pixie of a pixel, a thread in the fabric of the discipline’s crotch), but it becomes difficult to analyze Levine on her own when an excerpt from her own writing is so liberally sprinkled with the words of others. However, it is nonetheless admirable that Levine so artfully supplements her own words with those of others. That she is able to find experiences and memories whose resulting sentiments match those resulting from the writings of others is admirable, and I supposed I’ll have to see if I can apply such skill to my own writings in the future.