Chapter 7 — The Interview

Part I is an essay by Christopher Silvester (from his introduction to The Penguin Book of Interviews) on the history and varied opinions of the interview as a journalistic form. Part II is an extract from an interview of Umberto Eco conducted by Mukund Padmanabhan of The Hindu, in which Eco speaks about his work method, writing style, and the success of The Name of the Rose.

Some regard the interview as, in its highest form, a source of truth and, in its practice, an art. Denis Brian writes that "almost everything of moment reaches us through one man asking questions of another" and that the interviewer holds "a position of unprecedented power and influence". The chapter also calls the interview "a supremely serviceable medium of communication".

Many celebrities feel the interview is an unwarranted intrusion into their lives or that it diminishes them. V. S. Naipaul felt that some people are wounded by interviews and lose a part of themselves. Lewis Carroll had "a just horror of the interviewer" and never consented to one. Rudyard Kipling called it "immoral" and "a crime". Saul Bellow described interviews as "thumbprints on his windpipe".

The text mentions that in some primitive cultures it is believed that if one takes a photographic portrait of somebody, one is stealing that person's soul — an analogy used to describe how some celebrities feel about interviews diminishing them.

Umberto Eco is a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy who had already acquired a formidable reputation as a scholar in semiotics (the study of signs), literary interpretation, and medieval aesthetics before turning to fiction. His written output — literary fiction, academic texts, essays, children's books, newspaper articles — is described as staggeringly large and wide-ranging. In 1980 he achieved "intellectual superstardom" with The Name of the Rose, which sold more than 10 million copies.

Eco calls his secret the use of "interstices" — the empty spaces or idle moments in daily life. He explains: while waiting for an elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, he has already written an article. By consistently working in these otherwise wasted moments, he is able to produce a staggeringly large body of work.

Eco says, "I consider myself a university professor who writes novels on Sundays. It's not a joke." He identifies with the academic community, participates in academic conferences rather than writers' clubs, and notes he has written over 40 scholarly works alongside five novels. He does acknowledge that writing novels reaches a larger audience, since he cannot expect millions of readers for work on semiotics.

Unlike the typically depersonalised and dry academic style, Eco's scholarly writing has a playful and personal quality. At his first doctoral dissertation (at age 22), a professor noted that instead of the standard approach of presenting conclusions, Eco told the story of his research — including his trials and errors. The professor recognised this was right and published the dissertation as a book. This narrative quality has defined Eco's essays ever since.

Eco says he started writing novels by accident: "I had nothing to do one day and so I started." He had never felt the frustration his friend Roland Barthes felt about being an essayist and not a novelist. Eco started writing fiction relatively late — at the age of 50, more or less — and says novels probably satisfied his taste for narration.

No. Eco was not puzzled, though he said journalists and publishers were, because they believe people prefer easy reading. Eco notes that out of six billion people, the novel sold between 10 and 15 million copies — a small percentage — but exactly the readers who do not want easy experiences. His American publisher had originally given him an advance for only 3,000 copies, yet it sold two or three million in the US alone. Eco says the success of the book is ultimately a mystery that nobody can predict.

Kipling expressed a strongly condemnatory attitude, calling interviews "immoral", "a crime", "cowardly and vile", and saying no respectable man would ask for or give one. The irony noted in the text is that Kipling had himself interviewed Mark Twain only a few years before making these statements.

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