Street Haunting

We did a close reading in class of Virginia Woolf's short piece  Street Haunting: A London Adventure. I was amazed how, in a very short time, we could be immersed in the meandering, yet beautifully crafted sentences. Opening up a Virginia Woolf text in this way, one is able to see the precise skill she brings to create rhythm and imagery through punctuation, description, and figurative language. As is typical of Woolf, she is fascinated by the workings of human consciousness. The narrator in the story follows her mind into byways, lingers on objects and characters, and remembers. The whole piece has a sensation of the incredible richness of the city, but also its shadows and darker underbelly. As one of the students noted, it is cinematic. I had not thought of that piece in quite that way before, but of course as you read there is the sense of movement, just like a camera. That is the beauty of close reading skillful writing together. Everyone brings something different to the noticing and we are all richer for it.