the interview christopher silvester

 The Interview Story ( Flamingo) - Christopher Silvester

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

                   Christopher Silvester ( 1959 ) 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 . Following is an excerpt taken from his introduction to the Penguin Book of Interviews , An Anthology from 1859 10 the Present Day . 

The Interview Story

PART I

                      Since its invention a little over 130 years ago , the interview has become a commonplace of journalism . Today , almost everybody who is literate will have read an interview at some point in their lives , while from the other point of view , several thousand celebrities have been interviewed over the years , some of them repeatedly . So it is hardly surprising that opinions of the interview - of its functions , methods and merits vary considerably . Some might make quite extravagant claims for it as being , in its highest form , a source of truth , and , in its practice , an art . Others , usually celebrities who see themselves as its victims , might despise the interview as an unwarranted intrusion into their lives or feel that it somehow diminishes them , just as in some primitive cultures it is believed that if one takes a photographic portrait of somebody then one is stealing that person's soul . V. S. Naipaul ' feels that some people are wounded by interviews and lose a part of themselves , ' Lewis Carroll , the creator of Alice in Wonderland , was said to have had ' a just horror of the interviewer ' and he never consented to be interviewed - It was his horror of being lionized which made him thus repel would be acquaintances , interviewers , and the persistent petitioners for his autograph and he would afterwards relate the stories of his success in silencing all such people with much satisfaction and amusement . Rudyard Kipling expressed an even more condemnatory attitude towards the interviewer . His wife , Caroline , writes in her diary for 14 October 1892 that their day was ' wrecked by two reporters from Boston ' . She reports her husband as saying to the reporters , " Why do I refuse to be interviewed ? Because it is immoral ! It is a crime , just as much of a crime as an offence against my person , as an assault , and just as much merits punishment . It is cowardly and vile . No respectable man would ask it , much less give it , " Yet Kipling had H. G. Wells in an interview himself perpetrated such an ' assault ' on Mark Twain only a few years before . 1894 referred to the interviewing ordeal ' , but was a fairly frequent interviewee and forty years later tound himself interviewing Joseph Stalin . Saul Bellow , who has consented to be interviewed on several occasions , nevertheless once described interviews as being like thumbprints on his windpipe . 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 of moment reaches us through one man asking questions of another . Because of this , the interviewer holds a position of unprecedented power and influence . "

PART II 

                      " I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays " - Umberto Eco 

                      The following is an extract from an interview of Umberto Eco . The interviewer is Mukund Padmanabhan from The Hindu . Umberto Eco , a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy had already acquired a formidable reputation as a scholar for his ideas on semiotics ( the study of signs ) , literary interpretation , and medieval aesthetics before he turned to writing fiction . Literary fiction , academic texts , essays , children's books , newspaper articles his written output is staggeringly large and wide - ranging , In 1980 , he acquired the equivalent of intellectual superstardom with the publication of The Name of the Rose , which sold more than 10 million copies .

                      Mukund : The English novelist and academic David Lodge once remarked , " I can't understand how one man can do all the things he ( Eco ] does . ” 

                     Umberto Eco : May be I give the impression of doing many things . But in the end , I am convinced I am always doing the same thing . 

                     Mukund : Which is ?

                     Umberto Eco : Aah , now that is more difficult to explain . I have some philosophical interests and I pursue them through my academic work and my novels . Even my books for children are about non - violence and peace ... you see , the same bunch of ethical , philosophical interests . 

                     And then I have a secret . Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe , eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms ? The universe will become as big as my fist .

                     Similarly , we have a lot of empty spaces 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 . I work in empty spaces . While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor , I have already written an article ! ( Laughs ).

                  Mukund : Not everyone can do that of course . Your non - fictional writing , your scholarly work has a certain playful and personal quality about it . It is a marked departure from a regular academic style which is invariably depersonalised and often dry and boring . Have you consciously adopted an informal approach or is it something that just came naturally to you?

                     Umberto Eco : When I presented my first Doctoral dissertation in Italy , one of the Professors said , “ Scholars learn a lot of a certain subject , then they make a lot of false hypotheses , then they correct them and at the end , they put the conclusions . You , on the contrary , told the story of your research Even including your trials and errors . " At the same time , he recognised I was right and went on to publish my dissertation as a book , which meant he appreciated it .

                      At that point , at the age of 22 , I understood scholarly books should be written the way I had done by telling the story of the research . This is why my essays always have a narrative aspect . And this is why probably I started writing narratives [ novels ] so late at the age of 50 , more or less.

                     I remember that my dear friend Roland Barthes was always frustrated that he was an essayist and not a novelist . He wanted to do creative writing one day or another but he died before he could do so . I never felt this kind of frustration . I started writing novels by accident . I had nothing to do one day and so I started . Novels probably satisfied my taste for narration .

                       Mukund : Talking about novels , from being a famous academic you went on to becoming spectacularly famous after the publication of The Name of the Rose . You've written five novels against many more scholarly works of non fiction , at least more than 20 of them .

                     Umberto Eco : Over 40.

                    Mukund : Over 40 ! Among them a seminal piece of work on semiotics . But ask most people about Umberto Eco and they will say , “ Oh , he's the novelist . " Does I that bother you ?

                   Umberto Eco : Yes . Because I consider myself a I university professor who writes novels on Sundays . It's not a joke . I participate in academic conferences and not meetings of Pen Clubs and writers . I identify myself with the academic community . 

                    But okay , if they [ most people ] have read only the novels ... ( laughs and shrugs ) . I know that by writing novels , I reach a larger audience . I cannot expect to have one million readers ' villi stuff on semiotics.

                      Mukund : Which brings me to my next question . The Name of the Rose is a very serious novel . It's a detective yarn at one level but it also delves into metaphysics , theology , and medieval history . Yet it enjoyed a huge mass audience . Were you puzzled at all by this ? 

                       Umberto Eco : No. Journalists are puzzled . And sometimes publishers . And this is because journalists and publishers believe that people like trash and don't like difficult reading experiences . Consider there are six billion people on this planet . The Name of the Rose sold between 10 and 15 million copies . So in a way I reached only a small percentage of readers . But it is exactly these kinds of readers who don't want easy experiences . Or at least don't always want this . I myself , at 9 pm after dinner , watch television and want to see either ' Miami Vice or Emergency Room ' . I enjoy it and I need it . But not all day .

                 Mukund : Could the huge success of the novel have anything to do with the fact that it dealt with a period of medieval history that ... 

                   Umberto Eco : That's possible . But let me tell you another story , because I often tell stories like a Chinese wise man . My American publisher said while she loved my book , she didn't expect to sell more than 3,000 copies in a country where nobody has seen a cathedral or studies Latin . So I was given an advance for 3,000 copies , but in the end it sold two or three million in the U.S.

                   A lot of books have been written about the medieval past far before mine . I think the success of the book is a mystery . Nobody can predict it . I think if I had written The Name of the Rose ten years earlier or ten years later , it wouldn't have been the same . Why it worked at that time is a mystery.