100 Years Ago, Fictional Londoners Looked Up. They Saw Our Present Day.

Our critic A.O. Scott takes apart a scene from “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf’s 1925 masterpiece, and shows why the book is a must-read now.

By A.O. Scott

It’s London, 1923. Everyone suddenly looks up.

Every one looked up.

Dropping dead down the aeroplane soared straight up, curved in a loop, raced, sank, rose, and whatever it did, wherever it went, out fluttered behind it a thick ruffled bar of white smoke which curled and wreathed upon the sky in letters.

Near the beginning of “Mrs. Dalloway,” an ordinary day is disrupted by a technological intrusion. More than a century later, we might relate to this kind of thing, even if we’re more likely to be distracted by the pings and chirps of our portable screens. A sky-writing airplane, quaint as it may seem at first glance, brings us news of our current situation — about how we think, how we interact and how we experience reality.

Originally published in 1925, Virginia Woolf’s novel is about a single, hectic day in the life of an upper-class woman and a motley collection of her fellow Londoners. The book is an acknowledged classic, but what’s startling about looking at it with 21st-century eyes is how modern it feels. Read the full piece at the New York Times.