What We’re Reading… Søren Ulrik Thomsen

What was the last thing you read?

The most recent book I’ve read is The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, which, like his other novels, consists of very precise sociological observations of contemporary life, combined in a thought‑provoking and challenging way with what I would almost call metaphysical future fantasies. The first time I opened a book by this author was probably his masterpiece The Elementary Particles, and I immediately felt that here was a writer who truly had something to say. He and his compatriot Patrick Modiano are among the very few authors whose entire output I read without exception. I’m deeply envious of Modiano — I would very much like to have written his books, though they would, of course, have to be set in Copenhagen rather than Paris.

What are you reading now?

I’m currently reading Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger, recently republished and newly translated by Alhambra, but I’m not at all on the same wavelength as the book. As moving, funny and charming as I remember The Catcher in the Rye (or Forbandede ungdom, as the Danish edition was then titled), this one strikes me as mannered and stylistically overstrained. I know the characters are meant to appear affected and student‑like, but I feel the same applies to the narrative voice — and when I can see exactly where I’m supposed to laugh, it becomes all the more awkward when I don’t. I know the book has its admirers, and although I’m not one of them, I follow my principle and read it to the end, as I do with all books I’ve started.

What will you read next — and how do you choose?

The next book I’ll read is Lolland by Christian Vind, which I received as a gift and on the recommendation of a good friend. It’s a travel essay written over a three‑year period, during which the author travels every winter from Copenhagen to Lolland, seeking out and writing about visual art, architecture, history and the present he encounters there. Every time I’ve read a little ahead, I’ve been fascinated, so I’m looking forward to starting properly as soon as I’m finished with Salinger.

I always choose my next book based on immediate desire, and I always read it to the end as a matter of unbreakable principle — because after many perhaps tedious pages, one may suddenly come across wonderful passages one would otherwise never have reached.