The Interview | CBSE Class 12 English Notes

This note covers Christopher Silvester’s introduction, the contrasting views of interviews, Mukund Padmanabhan’s conversation with Umberto Eco, Eco’s working habits and scholarly identity, the reception of The Name of the Rose, central themes, language, key quotations and vocabulary.

Who is the author, and what kind of text is The Interview?

Christopher Silvester and the introduction

Christopher Silvester studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He worked as a reporter for Private Eye for ten years and wrote features for Vanity Fair. His introduction to The Penguin Book of Interviews supplies Part I of The Interview.

An anthology is a collection of selected writings. The collection introduced here brings together interviews from 1859 onwards. Silvester considers why interviews have become familiar in journalism while provoking sharply different responses from the people involved.

An interview is a structured conversation in which one person asks questions and another responds. The interviewer asks; the interviewee answers. This distinction matters because a writer can dislike answering questions yet still question someone else.

The conversation in Part II

Mukund Padmanabhan, from The Hindu, interviews Umberto Eco, a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy. Eco was already a respected scholar before becoming widely famous through fiction. His interests included semiotics, meaning the study of signs.

The work is non-fiction, writing about actual people and experiences. Part I discusses a form of communication; Part II presents an example of that form. Readers therefore encounter both objections to interviewing and the knowledge that a conversation can provide.

The distinction between the two parts also prevents confusion about authorship. Silvester supplies the introductory discussion, Padmanabhan asks the questions in Part II, and Eco supplies the answers about his own work and identity.

What happens in the section-by-section summary?

Part I: a familiar but disputed practice

The opening presents the interview as a familiar part of journalism, the work of gathering and presenting information to the public. Almost everybody who is literate will have read an interview at some point, while several thousand celebrities have been interviewed, some repeatedly.

Opinions vary considerably. Some might regard interviewing, at its highest level, as a way of discovering truth and as an art. Others, usually celebrities who feel victimised by it, might see it as an unjustified invasion of their private lives.

The discussion moves through the objections of several writers. V. S. Naipaul feels that some people are wounded by interviews and lose a part of themselves. Lewis Carroll refused interviews because he disliked being publicly celebrated. Rudyard Kipling condemned interviewing strongly, although he had himself interviewed Mark Twain.

H. G. Wells found interviewing disagreeable yet participated in it frequently and later interviewed Joseph Stalin. Saul Bellow compared its pressure to a grip on his throat. These examples show that discomfort and participation can exist together.

The conclusion nevertheless stresses the interview’s usefulness. Denis Brian observes that interviews supply vivid impressions of people living in our time. The interviewer’s influence comes from the importance of the information conveyed through questions and answers.

Part II: Eco explains his work

Padmanabhan begins with the apparent puzzle of Eco’s enormous output. Eco replies that the same philosophical interests run through his different kinds of writing. His children’s books, for example, explore peace and non-violence.

Eco also works in interstices, the small empty intervals within everyday life. He illustrates this with the time spent waiting for a visitor to come up in a lift. Such gaps become opportunities to write.

The conversation then turns to his scholarly style. Eco recalls presenting his research as a story that included unsuccessful attempts. A professor recognised its value and published his dissertation, a substantial academic research study, as a book.

Eco identifies primarily as a university professor, although his novels reach a larger audience. He objects to being known simply as a novelist because that description leaves out the academic community to which he feels he belongs.

Finally, the speakers discuss The Name of the Rose. Eco rejects the assumption that readers invariably want easy entertainment. He accepts that its medieval subject might have helped, but considers the particular success of the novel a mystery.

Why do views of interviews differ so sharply?

Truth, art and communication

The positive view concerns what an interview can achieve at its best. It can reveal the subject’s thoughts through direct answers and become an art through its practice. These are views that some might express, rather than guarantees about every interview.

Silvester’s concluding judgement is that, despite its drawbacks, the interview is an exceptionally useful medium of communication. Denis Brian connects this usefulness with the public’s vivid impressions of contemporary personalities, meaning people living in the same period.

Brian’s claim also explains the interviewer’s power. Questions help determine which thoughts, experiences and explanations reach an audience. The interviewer occupies a position between the public and the person whose ideas the public wishes to understand.

Privacy and the feeling of personal loss

The negative view centres on intrusion, an unwanted entry into someone’s private life. Celebrities who feel victimised might believe that an interview reduces or damages them. Naipaul’s view concerns some people, who feel wounded and lose something of themselves.

The comparison with photography refers to a belief in some cultures that a portrait can take away a person’s soul. It explains the fear of personal loss through public representation. It is a reported belief, not a statement that photography actually has this power.

Carroll’s refusal arose from his horror of being lionised, or treated as a celebrated public figure. He rejected would-be acquaintances, interviewers and persistent autograph seekers, later recalling his success with satisfaction and amusement.

Objection does not always mean refusal

Kipling’s condemnation, reported by his wife Caroline in her diary for 14 October 1892, treats interviewing as morally offensive and comparable to an assault. Yet he had questioned Mark Twain a few years earlier.

Wells referred to the ordeal of interviewing in 1894 but was a fairly frequent interviewee. Forty years later, he interviewed Stalin. Bellow also agreed to several interviews despite the force of his image of pressure on the throat.

The resulting contrast is between judgement and practice. A person may object to the experience yet still take part. Silvester’s account preserves these differences instead of presenting all famous writers as people who simply refuse interviews.

How are the principal characters and personalities presented?

Umberto Eco: productive and academically committed

In this non-fiction conversation, the principal personalities are real participants rather than invented characters. Eco emerges through what he says about his work. His productivity is linked to shared interests across different forms of writing and to his use of spare intervals.

His academic identity is explicit. He attends academic conferences and identifies with scholars. He corrects Padmanabhan’s estimate of his scholarly output to over forty works, reinforcing the substantial place of scholarship beside his five novels at the time of the conversation.

Eco also acknowledges limits to explanation. He does not claim to know exactly why his famous novel succeeded. His laughter and personal examples suggest ease in this particular interview, though they do not establish that he enjoys every interview.

Mukund Padmanabhan: a prepared questioner

Padmanabhan’s questions reveal familiarity with Eco’s academic writing and fiction. He asks about productivity, style, reputation and readership. His comparison between Eco’s playful writing and conventional scholarly prose gives Eco a specific issue to explain.

His follow-up questions grow from earlier answers. Once Eco mentions novels reaching more readers, Padmanabhan turns towards the success of The Name of the Rose. This connection helps the exchange progress without abandoning its central interest in Eco’s work.

The writers in Part I

Naipaul, Carroll, Kipling, Wells and Bellow illustrate different objections to interviews. Their role is to make the debate concrete. The details about their participation prevent their attitudes from being reduced to a single shared position.

How does Eco connect his interests and use interstices?

A shared purpose behind different forms

Padmanabhan introduces David Lodge’s amazement at Eco’s ability to do so many things. Eco replies that he is convinced he is doing the same thing throughout. He means that the underlying interests remain connected, even when the form of writing changes.

His academic work and novels pursue philosophical interests, or questions about ideas and understanding. His children’s books concern peace and non-violence. Ethical interests, concerns about right conduct and values, therefore connect with his philosophical concerns.

This explanation does not mean that a children’s book and an academic study are identical. The unity lies in the concerns that animate the writing. Different readers and forms can still be approached through a continuing set of interests.

Small intervals as working time

Eco uses interstices to describe empty spaces in daily life. His example is a visitor travelling upwards in a lift while Eco waits. The waiting period, normally treated as an interruption, becomes a moment in which he can work.

He introduces this idea through an analogy, a comparison used to explain an idea. He imagines removing empty space from the universe, then turns to the unused spaces in everyday life. The purpose of the comparison is to explain his working habit.

His claim that he can finish an article while the lift travels is accompanied by laughter. The example conveys his alertness to brief opportunities. It is not a timetable prescribing how much every writer should produce within a fixed interval.

Two explanations thus work together: continuity of interests gives direction to his output, and the use of small gaps creates opportunities for work. Focusing on spare time alone would miss the intellectual connection that Eco first emphasises.

What makes Eco’s scholarly writing distinctive?

Research presented as a story

Padmanabhan notices a playful and personal quality in Eco’s non-fiction. He contrasts it with a regular academic style that removes the writer’s personal presence and is often dry and boring. The word often matters: the criticism is not that all academic writing is boring.

Eco explains his approach through his first doctoral dissertation in Italy. A professor observed that scholars normally work through mistaken ideas, correct them and present conclusions. Eco had instead narrated the research process, including his trials and errors.

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation that can be examined and revised. By retaining unsuccessful hypotheses and attempts, Eco lets readers follow how an understanding developed. The presentation includes the journey towards the conclusion rather than merely its final result.

The professor recognised that Eco was right and published the dissertation as a book. Eco understood at twenty-two that scholarly books should be written through the story of the research. His essays consequently retained a narrative aspect, a quality of telling a story.

How this connects with his novels

Eco suggests that this is probably why he began writing novels so late, at fifty, more or less. These qualifications preserve an approximate age and a possible explanation. They should not be converted into a precise birthday or an established cause.

He contrasts himself with his friend Roland Barthes, who was frustrated at being an essayist rather than a novelist. Eco did not share that frustration. He says he began novels by accident, and that novels probably satisfied his taste for narration.

The connection is continuity in storytelling. His academic work already allowed him to narrate a process; fiction offered another way to use that taste. The conversation therefore complicates any simple division between scholarly reasoning and narrative writing.

Why does Eco value scholarship, and how does he explain his novel’s success?

Public reputation and chosen identity

Eco considers himself a university professor who writes novels on Sundays. He insists that this is not merely a joke. His participation in academic conferences, rather than writers’ gatherings, expresses where he places his professional identity.

He recognises that fiction reaches a wider audience. He cannot expect a million readers for work on semiotics. His irritation therefore coexists with an understanding of why most people know him as a novelist rather than as a scholar.

A demanding book with many readers

The Name of the Rose, published in 1980, is described as a detective story that also explores metaphysics, questions about reality and existence; theology, the study of religious belief; and medieval history, the history of the Middle Ages.

Padmanabhan asks whether its large audience surprised Eco. Eco replies that journalists and sometimes publishers are puzzled because they assume people dislike difficult reading. He challenges this assumption without saying that readers want difficult material at every moment.

His qualification is crucial: such readers do not want easy experiences, or at least do not always want them. He himself enjoys television after dinner but not all day. Easy entertainment and demanding reading can coexist in the same person’s preferences.

Keep each sales figure in its context

These figures refer to different contexts. Copies sold are also not a precise count of individual readers. Eco uses the scale of sales to explain the audience for difficult reading; the figures should not be combined into a new total.

Padmanabhan suggests that the medieval setting might explain the success. Eco accepts this as possible, but notes that many earlier books also concerned the medieval past. He thinks timing mattered, yet considers why this particular book succeeded at that time a mystery.

What themes and messages emerge from the two parts?

Privacy and public understanding

The first theme is the tension between privacy and the public’s wish to know prominent people. The writers’ objections show the possible personal cost of being questioned. Silvester’s conclusion recognises the public usefulness of information gained through interviews.

The two sides do not cancel each other. A medium can be valuable while making its subjects uncomfortable. Reading them together encourages attention both to what an audience learns and to how the questioned person experiences the encounter.

Unity within varied creative work

Eco’s account suggests that different kinds of writing can express a connected set of concerns. His work on ideas, his novels and his children’s books share ethical and philosophical interests. Variety of form need not mean a scattered intellectual purpose.

His account of research further connects scholarship with storytelling. The narrative of attempts and mistakes gives readers access to the process of thought. This relationship makes his later fiction part of a continuing interest in narration.

Identity and fame

The third theme is the gap between self-understanding and public reputation. Eco defines himself through scholarship, while most people identify him as a novelist. Greater visibility does not necessarily identify the work that a person considers central to their life.

His response combines dissatisfaction with realism. He wants his scholarly identity recognised, but accepts that novels reach a broader public. The exchange reveals this tension through his own explanation rather than through a label imposed by someone else.

Readers and the limits of prediction

Eco questions the assumption that a mass audience must prefer undemanding material. His qualification allows readers to enjoy both serious books and lighter entertainment. Reader preference is presented as more varied than a single fixed appetite.

The novel’s unexpected American sales also expose the limits of prediction. A publisher’s modest expectation did not determine the outcome. The message is not that difficult books inevitably succeed, but that this book’s extraordinary reception cannot be reduced to one certain explanation.

How do questions, answers and language shape the interview?

Connections between successive turns

A linker connects one statement with another. The conversation uses reference words and repeated ideas to keep successive turns related. When Eco mentions a single underlying activity, Padmanabhan asks him to explain it, prompting the account of his philosophical interests.

Repetition can also register new information. Eco corrects the estimate of his scholarly books to over forty, and Padmanabhan repeats the correction. The exchange allows the audience to notice the scale of Eco’s academic work.

A signaller is a phrase that prepares the listener for a change of subject. Padmanabhan introduces the next question when moving towards the novel’s readership. Eco similarly announces another story before discussing the American publisher’s expectations.

These devices create cohesion, the links between utterances, and coherence, a clear flow of meaning. The subjects develop from productivity to writing style, professional identity and literary success through connected turns.

Images, tone and qualifications

Bellow’s image of pressure on the windpipe is a simile, an explicit comparison. It conveys the feeling of being constrained or suffocated by an interview. It describes emotional discomfort through a bodily image rather than reporting an actual injury.

Eco’s lift example and the recorded laughter create an informal tone. His stories make abstract points accessible: waiting illustrates unused time, while the publisher’s misjudgement illustrates the unpredictability of reception.

Words such as probably, possible and more or less mark limits to certainty. They are part of the meaning, not disposable decoration. Retaining them preserves the difference between Eco’s conviction about shared interests and his uncertainty about literary success.

Which key quotations clarify the central ideas?

Interviewing as injury and communication

“thumbprints on his windpipe”

Speaker and context: Saul Bellow’s description, reported in Part I, concerns the pressure of interviews. The image conveys a feeling of suffocation. It helps explain why agreeing to an interview does not necessarily mean finding the experience comfortable.

“a supremely serviceable medium of communication”

Voice and context: Silvester’s assessment follows the writers’ objections. The phrase emphasises usefulness while leaving the drawbacks in place. It is the balancing judgement that closes the discussion of conflicting attitudes.

Eco’s working habits, identity and uncertainty

“I work in empty spaces.”

Speaker and context: Eco explains his use of interstices through waiting for a visitor’s lift. Empty spaces mean brief available intervals in his life, not a special physical location reserved for writing.

“I consider myself a university professor who writes novels on Sundays.”

Speaker and context: Eco answers the question about being widely recognised as a novelist. The statement places scholarship at the centre of his self-description, even though his fiction brings him a larger audience.

“I think the success of the book is a mystery.”

Speaker and context: Eco discusses The Name of the Rose after recalling his publisher’s low sales expectation. The phrase preserves his uncertainty. It rules out treating the medieval setting as his definite and complete explanation.

Glossary

• Intrusion — An unwanted entry into private life, as feared by celebrities who dislike being questioned.
• Lionised — Treated as a celebrated or important person and given eager public attention.
• Condemnatory — Expressing strong disapproval, like Kipling’s judgement of the practice of interviewing.
• Ordeal — A difficult or distressing experience that someone finds unpleasant to undergo.
• Contemporaries — People living during the same period, whose personalities interviews help audiences understand.
• Semiotics — The study of signs, a field associated with Eco’s scholarly reputation.
• Interstices — Small gaps or intervals; Eco uses the word for available moments within daily life.
• Dissertation — A substantial written research study produced for an academic qualification, such as a doctorate.
• Hypothesis — A proposed explanation that research may examine, correct or replace while developing understanding.
• Narrative — An account that tells a story, including the sequence of a research process.
• Metaphysics — Philosophical enquiry into reality and existence, one intellectual dimension of Eco’s famous novel.
• Theology — The study of religious belief and ideas, another subject explored in the novel.
• Linker — A word or expression that connects an utterance with an earlier idea.
• Signaller — A phrase that prepares a listener for a shift in the conversation’s topic.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Silvester condemns every interview. Correct: He presents objections but ends by emphasising the interview’s exceptional usefulness as a means of communication.
• Misconception: All writers who disliked interviews refused them. Correct: Wells and Bellow participated despite their discomfort; Kipling had himself interviewed Mark Twain.
• Misconception: Eco’s many activities have no connection. Correct: He identifies common philosophical and ethical interests running through different forms of his writing.
• Misconception: Eco considers fiction his primary professional identity. Correct: He identifies with the academic community and describes himself principally as a university professor.
• Misconception: Eco began novels at exactly fifty because academic writing disappointed him. Correct: He says fifty, more or less, and did not share Barthes’s frustration about not being a novelist.
• Misconception: The medieval setting definitely caused the novel’s success. Correct: Eco accepts that possibility but considers the success at that particular time a mystery.
• Misconception: The novel sold exactly 3,000 copies in America. Correct: That figure concerned the publisher’s expectation and advance; Eco reports eventual American sales of two or three million.
• Misconception: Eco says serious readers never enjoy easy entertainment. Correct: He says they do not always want easy experiences and mentions his own enjoyment of television after dinner.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Silvester reports that some people value interviews as truth-seeking and artistic, while some celebrities feel their privacy is invaded. Explain the contrast in two points. [2 marks]

1. The favourable view values an interview for revealing truth and for the skill with which it is conducted.
2. The unfavourable view stresses its personal cost: celebrities may experience the questioning as an unwanted intrusion into private life.

Q2. Kipling strongly condemned interviewing but had interviewed Mark Twain. Wells described it as an ordeal yet was a fairly frequent interviewee. Bellow compared interviews to pressure on his windpipe but agreed to several. What do these details show? Give three points. [3 marks]

1. Kipling’s conduct contrasts with his condemnation: he objected to the practice while having used it to question another writer.
2. Wells’s repeated participation shows that experiencing interviews as an ordeal did not necessarily make him refuse to take part.
3. Bellow’s comparison expresses discomfort, but his consent shows the same distinction between feeling pressured and deciding whether to participate.

Q3. Eco says shared philosophical interests connect his academic writing and novels; his children’s books concern peace and non-violence. He also uses small waiting intervals, calling them interstices, to write. Explain his productivity in three points using this information. [3 marks]

1. His academic work and novels have a common intellectual direction because they develop shared philosophical interests across different forms.
2. The children’s books extend this continuity through ethical concerns, specifically peace and non-violence, rather than representing an entirely disconnected activity.
3. Interstices are small available intervals within ordinary life, including moments spent waiting; Eco treats them as opportunities for work.

Q4. Eco’s dissertation told the story of research, including errors. A professor recognised its value and published it. Eco’s essays retained a narrative aspect; he began novels at fifty, more or less, and never shared Barthes’s frustration at being an essayist rather than a novelist. Explain the relationship between scholarship and storytelling in five points. [5 marks]

1. The dissertation presented research as a developing process, allowing readers to follow the route towards understanding rather than encountering conclusions alone.
2. Including errors made unsuccessful attempts part of that story, showing that the progress of research could itself supply narrative material.
3. The professor’s recognition and publication of the dissertation confirmed that this storytelling approach could have value within scholarly writing.
4. The narrative aspect of Eco’s essays shows continuity between his academic work and his later interest in writing novels.
5. His lack of Barthes’s frustration suggests that narration was already available within his essays; his approximate starting age should remain fifty, more or less.

Q5. Eco identifies as a professor who writes novels on Sundays, attends academic conferences, and has over forty scholarly works beside five novels at the interview’s time. Most people know him as a novelist. He recognises that novels reach more readers and cannot expect a million readers for semiotics, the study of signs. Analyse the tension between identity and fame in five points. [5 marks]

1. Eco’s self-description places the university professor at the centre of his identity, with novel-writing occupying a secondary position in that description.
2. His attendance at academic conferences supports this identity through his chosen professional community, rather than leaving it as a claim alone.
3. The contrast between over forty scholarly works and five novels shows the substantial scale of his academic output at the interview’s time.
4. Public recognition centres on his novels, creating a gap between the work that most people know and the identity he values.
5. He understands the gap because fiction reaches a wider audience than his specialist writing about semiotics, the study of signs.

Q6. Eco argues that some readers do not want easy experiences, or at least do not always want them. He also enjoys television after dinner, but not all day. Explain how these qualifications prevent an absolute claim about readers. [3 marks]

1. The phrase about not always wanting easy experiences allows the same reader to seek different levels of difficulty at different times.
2. Eco’s enjoyment of television after dinner illustrates that enjoying lighter entertainment can coexist with valuing demanding work and ideas.
3. The qualification about not watching all day limits that preference; his position does not divide everyone into permanently serious readers and permanent seekers of easy entertainment.

Q7. Eco’s American publisher expected no more than 3,000 copies to sell and gave an advance for 3,000. Eco reports eventual American sales of two or three million. Distinguish expectation from outcome. [2 marks]

1. The 3,000-copy figure belongs to the publisher’s initial expectation and the basis of the advance, rather than the eventual sales.
2. The outcome was two or three million American copies, far exceeding that expectation; the reported range should not become an exact figure.

Q8. Padmanabhan suggests that the medieval subject helped The Name of the Rose succeed. Eco calls that possible, notes that earlier books also explored the medieval past, and considers his novel’s success a mystery. He thinks a publication ten years earlier or later would not have had the same result. Explain his uncertainty in four points. [4 marks]

1. Eco accepts the medieval subject as a possible contribution, preserving a tentative explanation rather than declaring a proven cause of success.
2. The existence of earlier books about the medieval past means that the subject alone cannot uniquely explain his novel’s reception.
3. His description of success as a mystery openly acknowledges that he cannot offer a definite account of why the book succeeded.
4. His thought about publication ten years earlier or later suggests that timing mattered, but it remains his judgement rather than a demonstrated rule.

Key takeaways

• Part I weighs objections to interviewing against its usefulness, while Part II presents a conversation that reveals Eco’s ideas.
• Naipaul, Carroll, Kipling, Wells and Bellow express different objections; dislike does not necessarily imply refusal to participate.
• Eco connects varied forms of writing through shared ethical and philosophical interests, including peace and non-violence.
• Interstices are small available intervals in daily life which Eco turns into opportunities to work.
• Eco’s scholarly writing tells the story of research, allowing its trials and errors to become part of the narrative.
• His primary identification is with university scholarship, although his novels bring his work to a larger audience.
• The Name of the Rose challenges easy assumptions about readers, while its particular success remains a mystery for Eco.
• Linkers, signallers, follow-up questions and personal examples keep the interview connected, accessible and responsive to the speaker’s answers.

Test yourself

Who supplies the introduction, and who conducts the interview with Eco?

Christopher Silvester supplies the introductory discussion; Mukund Padmanabhan from The Hindu conducts the interview with Umberto Eco.

Why must Naipaul’s view retain the qualification “some people”?

His view concerns some people being wounded by interviews and losing part of themselves. Removing the qualification would make his claim universal.

What does being lionised mean, and why is it relevant to Carroll?

It means being treated as a celebrated public figure. Carroll’s dislike of this attention helps explain his refusal to be interviewed.

What are interstices in Eco’s account of his working habits?

They are small empty intervals within daily life. Eco uses such available moments, including waiting time, as opportunities to write.

How did Eco’s dissertation differ from a presentation of conclusions alone?

It told the story of the research, including trials and errors, so readers could follow the process leading towards its conclusions.

What is the difference between a linker and a signaller?

A linker connects an utterance with another idea; a signaller prepares the listener for a shift in the conversation’s subject.

Does Eco offer the medieval setting as a certain explanation of his novel’s success?

No. He accepts that it is possible, but regards the success at that particular time as a mystery.

What does Eco’s laughter suggest, and what does it not establish?

It suggests ease in this particular conversation. It does not establish that he enjoys every interview or every kind of question.