| Kim Simonsen
1.What makes a good review?
Keeping an open mind with regard to the independent tone of the work being considered, and the ability to refrain from reading the work that is not there or searching for a different tone and form. But not least an open mind with regard to modern literature, and the honest presentation of your views instead of automatically and scholastically rejecting anything on the grounds that it is heterogeneous and experimental (or not sufficiently experimental). Not preferring your own idiosyncratic taste. The ability to see long lines in the history of literature, without falling prey to cultural conservatism. Never to arrive - but always to be on the move with literature. Delicate, sensitive, hard, tough, lively, honest, objective, courageous. And the willingness to put your reputation on the line (reviewers could be writers themselves, for instance) and expose yourself to criticism. Reviews of modern art or literature can never be classicist or excessively controlling. In art there is no such thing as a standard measurement - the history of literature teaches us this.
2. Which of your own reviews do you like best?
A lengthy series of articles and literary criticism on the subject of young Faroese poets in relation to the concepts of irony and pathos, which I would describe as a debate about whether post-modernist views of literature have outlived themselves; and a recently published major critical review of a collection of poetry by Tóroddur Poulsen published in 2003.
3. What do you like reading yourself?
I prefer to read and review poetry, films and books about art and philosophy. I've just read most of Pessoa's poems and re-read Rilke, and I'm reading V.S. Naipaul's essays. I've just re-read a wonderful little book by Oluf Lagercrantz entitled "Om konsten att läsa och skriva" (The Art of Reading and Writing) - this ought to be required reading for students of literature everywhere.
Kim Simonsen
(born 1970) has been the most active reviewer and writer on the subject of culture in the Faroe Islands in recent years. He has an MA in Scandinavian Literature, and is currently completing a research degree at the University of Copenhagen. Kim Simonsen has an international outlook, and his recently published collection of essays is characteristically entitled Åbne vinduer (Open Windows). In his articles he issues a repeated warning against the strong currents of national romanticism that dominate some parts of Faroese society, underlining that the past that people admire so much is a fictional one. He says that where other people apparently see identity, he sees only weakness and introvertedness. Despite the fact that his criticism goes primarily against the views of the republican movement on the islands, he is a declared supporter of Faroese independence.
|
