The Interview

The chapter has two distinct parts. Part I is Christopher Silvester's essay on the history and nature of the interview as a form. Part II is Umberto Eco's own interview, in which he answers questions about how he manages to write so much.

Part I — the case against, and for

Silvester opens with the objections of famous writers. Rudyard Kipling called being interviewed 'a loathsome thing' and said it was immoral — a crime, like an assault from behind, and a violation as if one were held up and robbed. H. G. Wells said interviewers should be shot. Saul Bellow compared having his personality investigated to having his pocket picked. V. S. Naipaul found the process artificial and distorting.

Against this, Silvester also states the case for the form. Denis Brian defended it as a genuine literary technique that has produced revealing self-portraits. Someone as guarded as Lenin nonetheless recognised its usefulness and gave interviews when it suited his purposes.

Silvester traces the interview's history: it developed alongside the rise of newspaper and magazine journalism, becoming a recognisable form by the early twentieth century, and by the time of the essay it had become a fixture of television as much as print. He observes that whatever writers say about it, the interview has become one of the primary ways the public comes to know a public figure — sometimes overshadowing the work itself.

Part II — Umberto Eco interviewed

The second part is a real interview with the novelist and academic Umberto Eco, prompted by the astonishing volume of his output — novels, essays and scholarly work across several fields.

Asked how he finds the time, Eco says people always ask this and that the honest answer is simple: he does not waste the interstices, the small gaps of time others let go to waste. He writes standing at a lectern between other tasks, on trains, wherever a few minutes present themselves. He rejects the idea that a writer needs long unbroken stretches of leisure.

He is asked whether he uses a computer, and says he does — it has changed his working method, letting him revise directly rather than through drafts, though he insists a computer does not do the thinking for him.

Asked about the range of his interests, moving between semiotics, medieval studies and fiction, he explains that he does not see them as separate: they are all expressions of the same curiosity, pursued through different disciplines. He rejects the suggestion that he is a genius, insisting instead on method and habit: writing every day, in the gaps, rather than waiting for inspiration.

The interview closes on a note of self-deprecating humour, with Eco resisting the interviewer's attempts to make him sound extraordinary and insisting his productivity is a matter of not wasting time rather than any special talent.

The writers quoted against interviewing

Kipling, Wells, Bellow and Naipaul share a single complaint even though their language differs: the interview takes something without consent. Kipling's imagery is violent — assault, robbery — because he experienced the interviewer's questions as a forced entry into territory he had not opened.

What unites them is the sense that a writer's considered work, revised and controlled, is being replaced in the public mind by unconsidered spoken answers given under pressure.

Umberto Eco

Eco is presented as the opposite case — a writer entirely at ease with the form, because he treats the interviewer's questions as ordinary and answers them without defensiveness.

His most striking trait is modesty offered as method. Asked to explain something that looks like genius, he redirects the answer towards habit: he does not waste time, he writes in the gaps, and his wide interests are one curiosity rather than several talents. This has the effect of making his achievement seem replicable rather than exceptional, which is itself a kind of generosity to the reader.

The interviewer's role (implied)

Though not named as a character, the interviewer's questions shape what we learn. The persistent attempt to get Eco to admit to genius, and his equally persistent refusal, is itself a small drama within Part II.

Silvester as essayist

Silvester does not take a side. He assembles the objections and the defences and lets the historical account speak for itself — that whatever writers think of interviews, the form has become permanent and influential, which is presented as a fact rather than a verdict.

Privacy versus public appetite

The central tension in Part I is between a writer's right to control what is said about them and the public's appetite to know them directly. The interview format promises access to the 'real' person behind the work — and writers like Kipling argue that this promise is a kind of theft, because the spoken, unrevised self is not the self they intend to present.

Control versus spontaneity

A writer's usual medium is the page: drafted, revised, controlled. An interview strips that control away, since answers are given on the spot and cannot be withdrawn. This is the deeper reason for the hostility — it is not merely intrusion but a loss of authorship over one's own image.

The interview as a genuine form

Silvester's historical account balances the complaints with the case that interviewing is a craft in its own right, capable of producing insight a formal essay could not — Denis Brian's 'revealing self-portraits'. The chapter does not resolve which view is correct; it presents both as legitimate.

Genius reframed as habit

Eco's half of the chapter makes a quieter but equally important argument: that what looks like extraordinary talent is often ordinary discipline applied consistently. Using the interstices, writing daily, not waiting for inspiration — none of this is mysterious, and Eco insists on saying so.

This is worth pairing with Part I: Eco is comfortable being interviewed precisely because he has nothing to protect that fame has not already made public. His openness is the opposite pole from Kipling's guardedness.

Part I as an essay of quotation

Silvester's method is to let the writers speak for themselves. Rather than paraphrasing Kipling's objection, he quotes the violent imagery directly — 'immoral', 'a crime', 'assault from behind' — which makes the hostility vivid rather than reported.

The essay is structured to present a spectrum of opinion rather than a single argument, moving from the most hostile witnesses to the more accepting ones, and closing with the historical observation about the form's permanence.

Part II as transcript

The second part changes register entirely — from analytical essay to question and answer. This formal shift is itself meaningful: having just read an essay about whether interviews distort their subjects, the reader is handed an actual interview and can judge for themselves whether Eco seems distorted or genuinely represented.

Eco's answers are notably plain and undefensive, in contrast with the guarded, wounded tone of the writers quoted in Part I. The chapter's structure invites the comparison without stating it.

Why the two parts are paired

Putting an essay about the ethics of interviewing directly before a real interview is a deliberate structural choice. It lets students test the theory against a case: does Eco's interview feel like an assault, as Kipling claimed it always is? The chapter's implicit answer is that it depends entirely on the writer's own relationship to being known.

The questions that recur

• The case against interviewing — name the writers and their objections.
• The case for interviewing.
• How Eco manages his output — the interstices answer.
• What Eco's interview reveals about his personality.
• Comparing Part I and Part II.

The balanced answer on Part I

Do not present the essay as one-sided. Name the objectors — Kipling ('a loathsome thing', 'immoral'), Wells, Bellow, Naipaul — and the defence — Denis Brian's 'revealing self-portraits', Lenin's practical use of the form. A one-sided answer misrepresents the essay.

The Eco answer

The expected point is interstices — using the small unnoticed gaps of time rather than waiting for long stretches of leisure. Add that he attributes this to habit and method rather than talent, and that he resists the interviewer's suggestion of genius.

Details worth memorising

Kipling's exact phrases; H. G. Wells wanting interviewers shot; Saul Bellow's pickpocket image; Denis Brian's phrase 'revealing self-portraits'; Lenin as a counter-example; Eco's use of 'interstices'; his comment on the computer changing his method without doing his thinking.

Mistakes that cost marks

• Treating Part I as only hostile to interviews — the defence is equally part of the text.
• Saying Eco has extraordinary powers of concentration — his own point is that he does not, only habit.
• Confusing the two parts' authors — Silvester writes Part I; Eco is interviewed in Part II.