We Wrote a Literary Sketch of a User — Based Only On Her Shelf

We’re always on about how your Shelf reflects the real you — now, we’re putting our “Money, Money, Money” where our mouths are and proving it with Shelf Portrait. How it works: You submit your most representative Shelf; we interpret it to create a one-of-a-kind, personality-revealing work of art. Do we get it right? Or are we totally out of pocket? There’s only one way to find out. 

The Shelf

The Shelf Portrait

Friday night. 11 p.m. The corner of a softly lit, sparsely furnished railroad apartment in Greenpoint. Jenny has just finished explaining Club Chalamet to a man wearing a Hot Girls for Zohran cap who stopped by for one drink and stayed way too long. But she doesn’t notice — she’s in her element, now monologuing about how Suzanne Collins is the best writer since Hemingway. Sunrise on the Reaping, she insists, asks the question of our time: What if a fascist was young and hot? What if political allegory?

Speaking of hot and monologues, that’s the plot of Closer, the 2004 Mike Nichols film that has lived rent-free in her head since she watched it for the first time yesterday. Vitally, Closer opens with Natalie Portman in the kind of Y2K shearling coat she would buy on Depop for $300 despite it being from Wet Seal and made of plastic. She’s convinced Clive Owen deserves a renaissance. 

After lighting a D.S. & Durga candle (Salt Marsh Rose), she lounges on her green velvet West Elm couch, listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell! for the 98th time. Halfway through “Venice Bitch,” she pours her second glass of pinot grigio, switches to Charli XCX, and texts her situationship, “This is literally us.” They’ve hung out twice, but Charli makes it feel cinematic — she’s Natalie with a pink bob, he’s Clive. 

Later, after viewing her weekly recap, Jenny decides she needs to diversify her Shelf. She scrolls through her Spotify, searching for something that sounds like who she wants to be. SZA, maybe. SZA feels like permission to read screenshotted texts from 2015 and feel the ache again. 

Self-mythology is her love language: She knows she’s the main character but never quite believes it, which might explain why her Notes app is filled with romantic observations of strangers (this also explains the low storage on her iPhone). She pretends she doesn’t listen to Taylor Swift. She does, of course. She always will.