Q1. What are some of the positive views on interviews?

Ans: The positive views on interviews are that it is a medium of communication and a source of
truth and information. Some even look at it as an art. These days we know about celebrities and
others through their interviews.
Q2. Why do most celebrity writers despise being interviewed?
Ans: Most celebrity writers despise being interviewed because they look at interviews as an
unwarranted intrusion into their lives. They feel that it diminishes them. They feel that they are
wounded by interviews and lose a part of themselves. They consider interviews immoral and a
crime, and an unwanted and unwelcome interruption in their personal life.
Q3. What is the belief in some primitive cultures about being photographed?
Ans: Some primitive cultures consider taking a photographic portrait is like stealing the
persons’s soul and diminishing him.
Q4. What do you understand by the expression ‘thumbprints on his windpipe’?
Ans: Saul Bellow once described interviews as being like ‘thumbprints on his windpipe’. It
means he treated interviews as a painful experience, as something that caught him by his
windpipe, squeezed him and left indelible thumbprints on that. It also means that when the
interviewer forces personal details from his interviewee, it becomes undesirable and cruel.
Q5. Who, in today’s world, is our chief source of information about personalities?
Ans: The interviewer is the chief source of information in today’s world. Our most vivid
impressions of our contemporaries are based on communication that comes from them. Thus,
interviewers hold a position of power and influence.
Understanding the text:

Q1. Do you think Umberto Eco likes being interviewed? Give reasons for your opinion.
Ans: Umberto Eco does not think highly of interviewers who he thinks are a puzzled bunch of
people. He has reasons for thinking so as they have often interpreted him as a novelist and
clubbed him with Pen Clubs and writers, while he considers himself an academic scholar who
attends academic conferences and writes novels on Sundays.
Q2. How does Eco find the time to write so much?
Ans: Eco humorously states that there are a lot of empty spaces in his life. He calls them
‘interstices’. There are moments when one is waiting for the other. In that empty space, Eco
laughingly states that he writes an article. Then he states that he is a professor who writes
novels on Sundays.
Q3. What was distinctive about Eco’s academic writing style?
Ans: Umberto’s writings have an ethical and philosophical element underlying them. His non-
fictional writing work has a certain playful and personal quality about it. Even his writings for
children deal with non-violence and peace. This style of writing makes reading his novels and
essays interesting and being like the reading of most academic writings. His works are marked
by an informal and narrative aspect.
Q4. Did Umberto Eco consider himself a novelist first or an academic scholar?
Ans: Umberto identified himself with the academic community, a professor who attended
academic conferences rather than meetings of Pen Clubs. In fact, he was quite unhappy that
the people referred to him as a novelist.
Q5. What is the reason for the huge success of the novel, The Name of the Rose?
Ans: The success of The Name of the Rose, though a mystery to the author himself, could
possibly be because it offered a difficult reading experience to the kind of readers who do not
want easy reading experiences and those who look at novels as a machine for generating
interpretations. For the same reason, the sale of his novel was underestimated by his American
publishers, while the readers actually enjoyed the difficult reading experience that was offered
bv Umberto Eco by raising questions about truth and the order of the world.
SHORT ANSWER TYPE QUESTIONS
Q1. Why did Lewis Carroll have a horror of the interviewer?
Ans: Lewis Carroll was said to have had a just horror of the interviewer. It was his horror of
being lionized which made him thus repel would-be acquaintances, interviewers, and those
seeking his autographs. So, he never consented to be interviewed.
Q2. How did Rudyard Kipling look at interviews?
Ans: Rudyard Kipling condemned interviews. His wife writes in her diary that Rudyard Kipling
told the reporters that he called being interviewed as immoral and a crime like an offence
against any person. It merited punishment. It was cowardly and vile.
Q3. How were Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells critical of interviews yet they indulged in
interviewing others or being themselves interviewed?
Ans: Rudyard Kipling criticized interviews yet he interviewed Mark Twain. H.G. Wells referred to
an interview in 1894 as an ordeal. Yet he was a fairly frequent interviewee. He also interviewed
Joseph Stalin forty years later.
Q4. How are interviews, despite their drawbacks, useful?
Ans: Despite their drawbacks, interviews are a supremely serviceable medium of
communication. We get ‘ our most vivid impressions of our contemporaries through interviews.
Denis Brain writes that almost everything of moment reaches us through interviews.

The Interview Extra Questions and Answers Long Answer Type

Question 1.
Give a character sketch of Umberto Eco on the basis of the chapter ‘The Interview’.
Answer:
Umberto Eco, a university professor at the university of Bologna in Italy, is an academician and
a famous novelist. He, through various interviews, discloses his secret of success in life and
never hates the interviewers. He has his taste in various fields of writing such as academic
texts, fiction and nonfiction, literary fiction, essays, children’s books, newspaper articles etc.

He always wanted to be called an academician not a novelist. He used to participate in

academic conferences, on the other hand, he avoided the meetings of writers and Pen Club
Members. He has written forty scholarly works and novels only five. He used to denote time for
writing novels on only ‘Sundays’. He discovered a magical trick of working in interstices.

used to use even the seconds of his time. He captured the empty spaces for writing notes or
any content. He had an expertise in ‘Semiotics’: the study of signs. He never became a slave of
proud as he openely admitted that his novel ‘The Name of the Rose’ got success accidently and
the time was in his favour. He didn’t have any attitude of the celebrity though his novel was
bought by more than the 10 million of the readers.

Question 2.
‘Mukund Padmanabhan’ was a reporter from ‘The Hindu’. In the context of the chapter, re-veal
his traits as an interviewer.
Answer:
Mukund Padmanabhan was surely a successful and well thought-out reporter who always used
to ask answerable and dexterous questions to his interviewees. He used to plan and prepare to
con-duct an interview of a celebrity. He never asked ugly or embarrasing questions and on the
other hand, the celebrity whom he interviewed always seemed to be comfortable with his
questions. Through the inteviews, readers not only got the informations

about the celebrities but many other important aspects of Mukund’s personality also came in
their knowledge. He asked brief and quality questions to his interviewees scrupulously. He let
the interviewees spoke in their own manner and never tried to interrupt or cross-questioned
them.

Question 3.
Several celebrities despise being interviewed. Is this justified? Why? Why not?
Answer:
There are several celebrities mentioned in this chapter like Rudyard Kipling, V.S. Naipaul, H.G.
Wells, Saul Bellow and etc. who dislike interviews very strongly. They never became ready to
be interviewed. Most of them considered interviews as an unwarranted intrusion into their lives.
They did not want to reveal the secrets of their personal lives.

Even an interview is considered as an immoral activity, as a crime or sometimes as an assault.

They feel that the interviewers waste their precious time which can be used by them for more
creativity. On the other hand, the common masses take interviews very positively as they come
to know about the inner and hidden things of their ideals. But interviews have their drawbacks
also.
Celebrities feel shy and disappointed when they are asked for interviews but they forget that
they become famous and wealthy through the successful interviews. General mass become
their fan and devotee by knowing more and more about their ideals. Celebrities are even
worshiped. In this regard, it can be said that an interview cannot be termed as an immoral
activity.
Even an interview is considered as an immoral activity, as a crime or sometimes as an assault.
They feel that the interviewers waste their precious time which can be used by them for more
creativity. On the other hand, common mass take interviews very positively as they come to
know about the inner and hidden things of their ideals. But interviews have their drawbacks
also.
Celebrities feel shy and disappointed when they are asked for interviews but they forget that
they become famous and wealthy through the successful interviewes. General mass become
their fan and devotee by knowing more and more about their ideals. Celebrities are even
worshipped. In this regard, it can be said that interview cannot be termed as an immoral activity.

The Interview Extra Questions and Answers Extract Based

Yet despite the drawbacks of the interview, it is a supremely serviceable medium of

communication. “These days, more than at any other time, our most vivid impressions of our
contemporaries are through interviews.” Denis Brian has written. “Almost everything in a
moment reaches us through one man asking questions of another. Because of this, the
interviewer holds a position of unprecedented power and influence.”

Questions :
(a) Despite the drawbacks, what is an interview ?
(b) Through which medium, how do we get most vivid impressions of our contemporaries ?
(c) How, according to Denis Brian, almost everything in the moment reaches us ?
(d) Because of interviews, what position does the interviewer hold ?
Answers :
(a) Despite the drawbacks, an interview is a supremely serviceable medium of communication.
(b) Through interviews, we get most vivid impressions of our contemporaries.
(c) According to Denis Brian, almost everything of moment reaches us through one man asking
questions to another.
(d) Because of interviews the interviewer holds a position of unprecedented power and
influence.

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces in all
the atoms ? The universe will become as big as my fist. Similarly, we have a lot of empty space
in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator
and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space.
Questions :
(a) What secret did Umberto Eco had ?
(b) What did Umberto Eco tell about the universe as well as fist ?
(c) What, according to the interviewee an ‘interstice’ ?
(d) What example did Umberto quote about an empty space ?