The Interview
by Christopher Silvester / Mukund Padmanabhan
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The chapter has two parts. Part I is an excerpt from Christopher Silvester's introduction to 'The Penguin Book of Interviews', which discusses the nature, functions and value of the interview as a form. Since its invention about 130 years ago, the interview has become a common feature of journalism; opinions about it are divided. Some celebrities (like V.S. Naipaul, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling and Saul Bellow) considered it an intrusion that 'wounds' or 'diminishes' them, while others regard it as an invaluable, even supremely serviceable, medium of communication. Silvester concludes that despite reservations, the interview is a useful source of truth and an art form. Part II is Mukund Padmanabhan's interview of Umberto Eco, the famous Italian professor and author of 'The Name of the Rose'. Eco explains how he uses the empty 'interstices' of time, his 'playful' scholarly style, and how his identity as a novelist grew out of his academic work, expressing surprise at the runaway success of his novel.
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Part I examines the interview as a modern literary and journalistic form, its power, its ethics and the divided opinions about it. Part II is a model interview that illustrates those ideas through Umberto Eco's reflections on his work.
Part I: Views for and against the interview
Since its origin about 130 years ago, the interview has become commonplace in journalism. Many celebrities dislike it: some, like V.S. Naipaul, feel it wounds them; Lewis Carroll had a horror of it; Rudyard Kipling's wife called it immoral and cowardly; and some liken it to an assault or to the primitive belief that a photograph steals the soul. Others value it highly as a source and an art form.
Part I: The interview's value
Despite reservations, Silvester notes that the interview, in its most exalted form, is a source of truth and, in its practice, an art. It gives us the most vivid impressions of our contemporaries and, for the interviewer, a position of unusual power and influence over public perception.
Part II: Umberto Eco's method
In the interview, Umberto Eco explains his astonishing productivity by saying he works in the empty 'interstices', the small gaps of time others waste. He describes his academic writing as 'playful' and full of a personal, narrative voice, which is why it is accessible. He reveals that he sees himself primarily as a university professor and philosopher who writes novels on Sundays.
Part II: The novelist Eco
Eco says he became a novelist almost by accident and that his novels pursue the same ideas of semiotics, philosophy and ethics as his scholarly work, only through storytelling. He is genuinely puzzled by the enormous commercial success of 'The Name of the Rose', a difficult novel about medieval monks, and modestly attributes it partly to mystery and luck.