CBSE Class 12 English The Interview Notes Set 04

The Interview

About the Author

Christopher Silvester (1959-Present) was a student of History at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was a reporter for Private Eye for ten years and has written features for Vanity Fair magazine.

Chapter Sketch

‘The Interview’ is an excerpt from the author’s introduction to the ‘Penguin Book of Interviews, An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day’. The author expresses his views on the interview as a genre of communication. The chapter has two parts. The first part deals with the views of eminent people about the condemnatory aspects of the interview. The latter part reproduces an actual interview of Umberto Eco, who is being interviewed by Mukund Padmanabhan from ‘The Hindu’.

About the Character

• Umberto Eco: He is an expert scholar in Semiotics (the study of signs) and a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy. His novel ‘The Name of the Rose’ sold more than 10 million copies.
• Mukund Padmanabhan: He is the interviewer who is from the newspaper ‘The Hindu’.

Summary of the Chapter

Part I

About Interviews

Today, interviews have become a common aspect of journalism. Every person has read or heard an interview. Hence, different people have varied opinions about its uses, modes and advantages. Some people claim that it is a source of truth while others feel that in practice it is an art. Many celebrities despise interviews. They believe themselves to be victims of unwarranted intrusion into their lives and feel that it depreciates their personality.

Different Opinions

V.S. Naipaul is of the opinion that interviews injure people as they lose a part of themselves.

Lewis Carroll, the creator of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, never consented to an interview. His refusals for interviews helped him keep his fans, acquaintances and interviewers at bay. Later, he would narrate such experiences of his refusal with great satisfaction and amusement.

Rudyard Kipling hated interviews. His wife, Caroline, wrote in her diary on 14th October, 1892 that their day was ruined by two reporters. Since then, he refused to give interviews. He considered them immoral, cowardly, a crime and an assault which is worthy of punishment. He did not respect the interviewee or the interviewer. However, Kipling himself interviewed Mark Twain a few years before this tirade against interviews.

H.G. Wells, an eminent science fiction writer, frequently gave interviews but in an interview in 1894, referred to ‘the interviewing ordeal’. Forty years later, he interviewed Joseph Stalin, a Russian revolutionary.

Saul Bellow felt that interviewers created so much tension and pressure that he felt suffocated.

Summing Up

Despite its disadvantages, the interview is an excellent medium of communication. Denis Brian gives an elevated position to the interviewer because of his power and influence over the interviewee. He terms the interview as an expressive medium.

Part II

This part is an extract from an interview of Umberto Eco, who is being interviewed by Mukund Padmanabhan from ‘The Hindu’.

Umberto Eco is a renowned scholar known for his ideas on Semiotics (the study of signs), literary interpretation and medieval aesthetics. He has written an array of works ranging from literary fiction, academic texts, essays, children’s books and newspaper articles. He became popular due to his book ‘The Name of the Rose’.

Eco’s Secret

Mukund Padmanabhan, asks Umberto Eco how he could do all the things that he did. Umberto Eco replies that he has always been writing the same philosophical and ethical ideas in different genres. Eco discloses that he utilises the ‘empty spaces’ i.e. the shortest gaps between two different works, to write. That’s the reason why he has produced so many works. He calls the ‘empty spaces’ ‘interstices’.

Eco’s Style of Writing

When the interviewer questions him about his playful and personalised style of writing, Eco replies that he learnt this writing style when he had presented his first Doctoral Dissertation in Italy. He had told the story of his research which impressed his Professor, who published his Dissertation as a book. This made Eco understand that he had to adopt the narrative style in all his works. This led him to become a novelist at the age of 50.

Eco remembers his friend Roland Barthes, an essayist, died frustrated before he could become a creative writer. Then, Eco mentions that he started writing novels by accident on a day when he had nothing to do. They catered to his taste for narration.

Eco-the Academician

Mukund Padmanabhan asks how Eco feels about people recognising him as a novelist although he is an academician with over 40 works in non-fiction. Eco tells him that he is not pleased as he belongs to the academic community and participates in academic conferences. He writes novels only on Sundays.

Success of ‘The Name of The Rose’

Mukund asks Eco if he is surprised by the success of the novel, ‘The Name of the Rose’. It is a serious novel that spins a detective yarn and ventures into metaphysics, theology and medieval history. For Umberto Eco, the success of the book is a mystery. His American publisher expected that the book won’t sell more than 3000 copies in a country where no one has seen a cathedral or studied Latin hence, Eco believes that if he had written it at any other time, it might have not been a success.

Word-Meaning

• common place: normal part
• celebrities: famous people
• unwarranted: unnecessary
• diminishes: lowers stature
• lionised: glorified
• condemnatory: reproachful
• perpetrated: carried out
• thumbprints on his windpipe: giving a feeling of suffocation
• serviceable: useful method
• medium: -
• of moment: having importance
• staggeringly: surprisingly
• elevator: lift
• depersonalised: formal
• dissertation: thesis
• hypotheses: proposed explanations based on limited evidence
• academic: scholar
• seminal: that which strongly influences later developments
• yarn: lengthy story
• metaphysics: philosophy concerned with abstract ideas
• theology: the study of God and religious belief

Important Themes of the Chapter

The main theme of the chapter is the various perspective of an interview and the ethics associated with an interview. It presents a spectrum of opinions on interviews, reflecting people’s various attitudes toward this journalistic practice. Some view interviews as valuable and essential, while others perceive them as invasive and detrimental. It also discusses ethical dimensions of conducting interviews, including debates about privacy, consent, and the potential impact on interviewees. The excerpt highlights concerns about the moral implications of interviewing, with references to it being seen as immoral or even criminal.