Ncert Solutions Class 12 Flamingo Prose Chapter 7 The Interview

Positive views on interviews treat the interview as a useful, even indispensable, modern way of getting to know the people who shape public life. Silvester quotes critics and writers who place it on a serious footing.

• It is a source of truth. Some critics, Silvester notes, make ``extravagant claims'' for the interview ``as being, in its highest form, a source of truth''. A well-conducted interview can put a question that the subject must answer in his or her own words, on record.
• It is an art form. The same critics regard the practice of interviewing, at its best, as an art. A skilled interviewer chooses questions, builds rapport and times silences in the way an artist arranges material.
• It is the most vivid medium of communication. Silvester cites Denis Brian: ``These days, more than at any other time, our most vivid impressions of our contemporaries are through interviews.'' Almost everything we know about a public personality reaches us through one person asking questions of another.
• The interviewer is powerful and influential. Because so much of public knowledge now passes through the interviewer's hands, Brian concludes that the interviewer holds ``a position of unprecedented power and influence''. The positive view sees the interviewer as a serious public actor, not a nuisance.

The positive views treat the interview as a source of truth, as a serious art at its highest level, as the most vivid modern medium through which we form impressions of our contemporaries, and as a practice that gives the interviewer ``unprecedented power and influence'' (Denis Brian).

Despise here means to look down on with strong dislike. Silvester records that ``usually celebrities who see themselves as its victims'' react to interviews with hostility. The reasons fall into three groups: loss of self, comparison to a primitive intrusion, and direct disgust.

• They feel diminished. V. S. Naipaul ``feels that some people are wounded by interviews and lose a part of themselves''. Naipaul treats the interview as an attack on the self, not a conversation.
• They compare it to a primitive intrusion. Silvester compares the celebrity attitude to a belief in ``some primitive cultures'' that a photographic portrait steals the subject's soul. The interview, on this view, performs the same kind of theft in words.
• They use the language of crime. Rudyard Kipling told two reporters from Boston that being interviewed is ``immoral'', ``a crime'', and ``as much of a crime as an assault'', and that ``no respectable man would ask it, much less give it''.
• They use the language of physical pressure. Saul Bellow, who had given many interviews, still described them as ``like thumbprints on his windpipe'': as if someone was pressing against his throat. Even cooperative subjects feel the constriction.
• They refuse on principle. Lewis Carroll had ``a just horror of the interviewer''. He never consented, and silenced callers ``with much satisfaction and amusement''.

Most celebrity writers despise interviews because they feel they are diminished or wounded by them (Naipaul), because they regard the practice as an intrusion comparable in some primitive cultures to having one's soul stolen by a portrait, because they describe it in the vocabulary of crime and assault (Kipling), and because even cooperative subjects feel pressure on their throats like ``thumbprints on a windpipe'' (Bellow). Lewis Carroll refused on principle and silenced interviewers with cool satisfaction.

Some primitive cultures, Silvester writes, ``believe that if one takes a photographic portrait of somebody then one is stealing that person's soul''. The belief sits at the heart of his comparison between the photograph and the interview.

• What the belief says. A photograph is not a neutral record. The act of taking the image is read as the act of capturing the inner self. The image, once held, contains a part of the subject that no longer belongs to him or her.
• Why it matters in the lesson. Silvester uses the belief as an analogy. Celebrities who hate interviews react in the same way: they feel that the interview, like the camera, has taken something from them and given it to someone else to keep or to display.
• The implied criticism of modern journalism. If a primitive culture's fear of the camera is read today as superstition, Silvester subtly asks, is the celebrity fear of the interview also superstition? Or are both responses pointing to a real loss of self?

In some primitive cultures, taking a photographic portrait of a person is believed to steal that person's soul. Silvester invokes the belief as an analogy to explain why many celebrities react to interviews with the same instinctive sense of having been robbed of something private.

Thumbprints on his windpipe is a vivid figure of speech used by the American novelist Saul Bellow to describe how the act of being interviewed felt to him.

• Read the image literally first. A thumbprint is left by pressing a thumb. The windpipe is the tube through which we breathe and speak. Thumbprints on a windpipe therefore name the marks left by someone pressing down on the throat.
• Now read the image as figure. Bellow does not mean the interviewer literally choked him. He means that the interview pressed on the part of him that produces speech: it constrained what he could say, how freely he could breathe, and even what tone he could use.
• Note that Bellow agreed to interviews. He had given several. The image therefore reports the inner feeling of a cooperative interviewee, not the protest of a refuser. Even for a willing subject, the interview leaves marks.
• Place it inside the chapter's argument. Silvester quotes Bellow to show that hostility to the interview is not the property of resisters alone. Even subjects who say yes carry the bruises of the form.

The expression ``thumbprints on his windpipe'' is Saul Bellow's metaphor for how the interview felt to him: as if a hand had been laid on the very part of his body that produces speech, constraining what he could say and how freely he could breathe. Even a cooperative interviewee, Bellow suggests, walks away from the form with marks left on him.

Today's world in Silvester's essay means the contemporary, post-1859 world in which the interview has become routine. In that world, he argues, the interviewer is the chief source of information about personalities.

• State Silvester's central claim. ``Almost everything of moment reaches us through one man asking questions of another.'' The interview is now the dominant route by which public information reaches the public.
• Add the supporting line. Denis Brian, whom Silvester quotes, writes that ``our most vivid impressions of our contemporaries are through interviews''. The vividness matters: it is not just any information, it is the impression we form.
• Identify the agent. Because the interviewer is the person performing this act of asking and conveying, the interviewer is, in effect, the chief contemporary source of information about personalities.
• Why this matters. If the interviewer holds that position, then ``the interviewer holds a position of unprecedented power and influence'': he shapes both what we know and how we feel about the people who shape our world.

In today's world, the interviewer is our chief source of information about personalities. Almost every vivid impression we form of a contemporary celebrity reaches us through one person asking questions of another, which is why Silvester says the interviewer now holds ``unprecedented power and influence''.

Liking an interview is hard to read off the page directly, so the question asks the student to weigh Eco's actual behaviour during the conversation. The evidence in Mukund Padmanabhan's interview points, on balance, to a subject who is comfortable, generous and clearly prepared to talk at length.

• Eco gives full, unhurried answers. When asked how he does so many things, he could have brushed off the question with one line. Instead he develops a small theory of ``interstices'', tells a story about an elevator and an article, and laughs at himself. He treats the interviewer's question as an invitation, not a trap.
• He volunteers anecdotes. Eco offers the story of his Doctoral viva (``you, on the contrary, told the story of your research''), the story of his American publisher (``three thousand copies''), and the line about himself as ``a professor who writes novels on Sundays''. A reluctant interviewee gives short, defensive answers; Eco gives stories.
• He laughs. Padmanabhan records two stage directions: ``(Laughs)'' after the elevator anecdote, and ``(laughs and shrugs)'' when discussing public perception of him as a novelist. Laughter is the marker of a relaxed subject.
• He answers a tough question without irritation. When Padmanabhan asks whether the popular image of him as ``the novelist'' bothers him, Eco says yes, then explains himself without snapping. He defends his identity as ``a university professor who writes novels on Sundays''. The defence is principled, not prickly.
• He shares hesitations. Eco confesses he himself watches ``Miami Vice'' or ``Emergency Room'' at 9 pm. A reluctant interviewee would not surrender that detail.

On the evidence of the conversation, Eco does seem to enjoy being interviewed: he gives long, story-rich answers; volunteers anecdotes from his viva, his publisher and his television-watching habits; laughs twice during the exchange; defends his identity as ``a university professor who writes novels on Sundays'' without irritation; and treats each question as an invitation to develop a thought rather than a probe to be deflected.

Interstices is Eco's own word for the small empty spaces in everyday life. The full answer to how he writes so much sits inside that idea, but it has three supporting pieces: a unifying interest, a way of using empty time, and a confessed ``secret''.

• The unifying interest. Eco says, ``in the end, I am convinced I am always doing the same thing''. His academic work, his novels, even his children's books are driven by the same bunch of ``ethical, philosophical interests'' (peace, non-violence, semiotics). He is not switching between unrelated projects; he is approaching one set of questions from many angles. This sense of unity means there is no ``warming-up'' cost between projects.
• The secret: writing in interstices. Eco asks Padmanabhan to imagine what happens if you eliminate the empty spaces inside atoms: the universe would shrink to the size of a fist. Most of life, he says, is empty space, the time between things. He calls these empty spaces interstices. He works inside them. ``While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article!''
• The reach this gives him. Because he writes in interstices, he can produce ``more than 40'' scholarly books in addition to his novels and children's writing without feeling that his day is consumed by writing. The output is the by-product of using time that other people throw away.

Eco finds the time to write so much because, first, all his projects are driven by the same set of ethical and philosophical interests, so he is never starting from cold, and second, he writes in what he calls interstices: the empty spaces of everyday life (the time spent waiting for an elevator, for a friend, for a lift), turning what most of us discard into productive minutes.

Distinctive here means the features that mark Eco's scholarly prose off from the standard academic style of the time. The two features Eco himself names are a narrative shape and a personal, playful voice.

• It tells the story of the research. At his doctoral viva, one professor complimented Eco for telling ``the story of your research, even including your trials and errors'' instead of presenting only the polished hypothesis-and-proof version that scholars usually publish. Eco took the compliment as a rule: from then on, his essays narrate the thinking process, false starts and all.
• It has a playful, personal quality. Padmanabhan notes that Eco's non-fictional writing has ``a certain playful and personal quality about it'', and that this is ``a marked departure from a regular academic style, which is invariably depersonalised and often dry and boring''. Eco's voice is warm; he writes in the first person; he allows humour.
• It uses anecdote. Eco told Padmanabhan, ``I often tell stories like a Chinese wise man''. He uses anecdote as a method of argument: the publisher who predicted 3,000 copies, the elevator, the Doctoral viva, all are evidence-by-story.
• It came naturally and was then adopted on purpose. Eco says the conversational, narrative style was not an act but ``came naturally to him''. The viva remark only gave him permission to keep doing what he was already inclined to do.

Eco's academic writing was distinctive in two ways. First, he told ``the story of the research'' rather than presenting only the final hypothesis, walking the reader through the trials and errors that lay behind the conclusion. Second, his voice was playful, personal and narrative-driven, a deliberate departure from the depersonalised, dry-and-boring tone that academic prose otherwise favoured.

Self-identification is what Padmanabhan probes when he points out that the world thinks of Eco as ``the novelist''. Eco's reply is unambiguous: scholar first, novelist on Sundays.

• The self-description. Eco tells Padmanabhan, ``I consider myself a university professor who writes novels on Sundays''. The italicised phrase is the title of the Part II extract. He treats it as his settled self-description.
• The professional company he keeps. Eco says, ``I participate in academic conferences and not meetings of Pen Clubs and writers''. He defines himself by where he goes: the academy, not the literary scene.
• The chronology of his own work. Eco wrote ``more than 40'' scholarly books before he started writing novels at the age of 50. The bulk of his life's work, by volume and by years, sits on the academic side of the line.
• Why he then writes novels at all. He started writing novels ``by accident'', because he had nothing to do one day. Novels, he says, ``probably satisfied my taste for narration''. The novels are an extension of his scholarship, not a replacement.

Umberto Eco considered himself first and foremost an academic scholar, not a novelist. His settled self-description was, ``I am a university professor who writes novels on Sundays''. He identified with the academic community, attended scholarly conferences rather than writers' meetings, had produced more than 40 academic works before he tried fiction at the age of 50, and treated novels as a way of satisfying his taste for narration rather than as his primary calling.

The Name of the Rose was Umberto Eco's first novel, published in 1980. It sold between 10 and 15 million copies worldwide. Asked why, Eco gives three overlapping reasons and one frank confession.

• It is a serious novel that respects its readers. Padmanabhan calls it ``a very serious novel'': a detective story on the surface, but with deep layers of metaphysics, theology and medieval history underneath. Eco believes there is a body of readers, in fact ``these kinds of readers'', who ``don't want easy experiences''. The novel was honest about being difficult, and difficulty was part of the appeal.
• Journalists and publishers misjudge readers. Eco argues that journalists and publishers ``believe that people like trash and don't like difficult reading experiences''. He believes they are wrong. Of six billion people on the planet, the small percentage that wants difficult writing is still ten or fifteen million. That small percentage was enough.
• The medieval setting helped. Padmanabhan asks if the novel's setting in a medieval monastery contributed. Eco concedes the point: ``that's possible''. Many books had been written about the medieval past before his, but his coincided with a renewed Western interest in the period.
• Timing was a mystery, and Eco admits it. Eco tells a story: his American publisher expected to sell only 3,000 copies; it sold ``two or three million in the U.S''. Many novels had been written about medieval life before his. Why The Name of the Rose worked in 1980 and might not have worked ten years earlier or ten years later remains, in Eco's own honest phrase, ``a mystery. Nobody can predict it''.

Eco offers three reasons and one confession. (a) The novel respected its readers: a body of serious readers exists who want difficult experiences, and The Name of the Rose gave them one. (b) Journalists and publishers misjudge the public, assuming readers want ``trash''; Eco believes they are wrong. (c) The medieval setting tapped into a renewed Western interest in that period. (d) Beyond these factors, the timing of a publishing success is, in Eco's own words, ``a mystery. Nobody can predict it''.

Add to the understanding is the operative phrase in this discussion question. The answer should choose one specific interview and explain three layers of understanding it added: about the celebrity, about the interviewer, and about the celebrity's field.

• Choose a specific interview. A useful example: the 2015 The Hindu interview with Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, conducted shortly before his death. (Any interview you have actually watched or read works for the exam, as long as you can name the celebrity, the interviewer or publication, and the date.)
• Understanding of the celebrity. The interview revealed Kalam's love of teaching over administration, his habit of reading three books at a time, and his careful distinction between the President's role and the scientist's role. None of these facets came through in his speeches; they only came through in answer to a specific question.
• Understanding of the interviewer. The interviewer's gentle, patient pacing, allowing Kalam to develop a story before nudging to the next point, made the conversation feel like a long evening on a veranda, not a press conference. That tone is itself a journalistic skill.
• Understanding of the field. Kalam answered a question about ISRO's future by describing not satellites but the teachers who train satellite-engineers. The interview opened up the field of Indian science as a teaching enterprise, not only a hardware enterprise.

A useful example: The Hindu's 2015 interview with Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. It added three layers of understanding. About the celebrity: it revealed his daily reading habit, his love of teaching over administration, and his sense of the President's role as separate from the scientist's. About the interviewer: the patient, story-friendly pacing was itself a skill on display. About the field: by answering a question about ISRO with a story about teachers, Kalam reframed Indian science as a teaching enterprise, not only a hardware one. A single well-conducted interview can do all three at once, which is why Silvester values the form.

Medium here means the channel through which the interview reaches the audience. The three named candidates have very different strengths, and a strong answer picks one openly and defends the choice with reasons grounded in the chapter.

• Print: depth and re-read-ability. A printed interview, like the Padmanabhan-Eco extract in this chapter, lets the reader pause, re-read a clever phrase (``interstices''), and return to the text after thinking about it. The printed form supports complex ideas because the reader controls the pace.
• Radio: voice and concentration. Radio strips away appearance and lets only the voice through. The listener focuses on tone, pause and emphasis. Saul Bellow's complaint about ``thumbprints on his windpipe'' is harder to imagine in radio, because the medium gives the speaker more room to breathe.
• Television: presence and body language. Television adds the face, the room, the gestures. A nervous laugh, a long pause, a glance away, all of which the reader of a printed transcript can only guess at, become evidence on television. But television also tempts the interviewer towards spectacle.
• My choice (a defensible model). Print, because the kind of interview Eco gives, full of theories, stories and long arguments, only fully lands when the reader can re-read the answer about interstices. Radio loses the elevator joke's punchline if the listener's attention wanders. Television tempts both sides into performance.

Print is the strongest medium for the kind of long-form, idea-rich interview the chapter showcases. It lets the reader pause, re-read sharp phrases like ``interstices'', and return to a difficult answer after thinking about it. Radio adds voice and concentration but loses subtlety on first hearing. Television adds body language and presence but tempts both speakers towards spectacle. For substance, print wins.

Privacy is a recognised civil right, and a famous person does not surrender that right by becoming famous. The chapter's own examples (Kipling, Bellow, Naipaul) record celebrities' protests against interviewers who pressed too close.

• Begin with the principle. Fame, in modern law and common sense, applies only to a person's public role. The actor's films are public; the actor's family is not. The politician's vote is public; the politician's health may not be. Interviewers cross a line when they probe the part of the celebrity's life that belongs only to him or her.
• Acknowledge the counter-argument. Public figures invite scrutiny when they speak about morality, governance or family. A film star who builds her brand on family values can hardly claim privacy when asked about her family. The line moves with the celebrity's own conduct.
• The chapter's evidence on intrusion. Kipling's wife recorded a day ``wrecked'' by two reporters from Boston. Kipling called interviewing ``a crime, just as much of a crime as an assault''. Saul Bellow, even when willing, described the interview as ``thumbprints on his windpipe''. These are not the words of writers who are merely shy; they are the words of writers who have been pushed too far.
• The interviewer's own responsibility. A good interviewer, the chapter implies, gets the answers that matter without crossing the privacy line. Padmanabhan's questions to Eco probe his identity, his style and his success; they never ask about his marriage, his children or his personal finances.
• A working rule. A celebrity's right to privacy protects everything not put on offer by the celebrity. The interviewer's task is to find substance inside the public space, not to invade the private space for sensation.

Famous people retain a right to privacy outside their public role. The chapter's evidence (Kipling calling the interview ``a crime, just as much of a crime as an assault''; Bellow's ``thumbprints on his windpipe'') shows that intrusion does measurable harm. Padmanabhan's interview with Eco, by contrast, asked about work, identity and success without ever probing personal life: proof that a serious interviewer can find substance without crossing the privacy line.

Short report of an interview is a journalistic form that condenses a long verbatim exchange into 200–250 words, organised by salient ideas rather than by question order. The model report below follows that brief.

• Headline. Eco: ``I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays.''
• Strap. The Italian semiotician and best-selling novelist on his unifying interests, his theory of empty spaces, and the mystery of mass success.
• By-line and dateline. By Mukund Padmanabhan, The Hindu, Bologna.

Report (model, approx. 230 words).

The University of Bologna's Professor Umberto Eco, whose 1980 novel The Name of the Rose has sold more than ten million copies, prefers to describe himself first as a scholar. ``I consider myself a university professor who writes novels on Sundays. It's not a joke,'' he says. ``I participate in academic conferences and not meetings of Pen Clubs and writers. I identify myself with the academic community.''

Asked how he manages to combine a body of more than 40 scholarly works with several novels and children's books, Eco offers a single explanation: all his work is driven by the same set of ``ethical, philosophical interests'', so very little energy is lost in switching between projects. He also confesses a ``secret'': he writes in what he calls interstices, the empty spaces of daily life. ``While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor,'' he laughs, ``I have already written an article.''

His scholarly prose, Eco accepts, is distinctive: it tells ``the story of the research'', trials and errors included, in a personal, narrative voice that he says ``came naturally'' to him. The narrative habit, he believes, was also what eventually drew him to fiction, ``probably to satisfy my taste for narration''.

On the runaway success of The Name of the Rose, Eco is characteristically frank: journalists and publishers, he believes, ``believe that people like trash and don't like difficult reading experiences''. He disagrees. ``If a book sells ten million copies, it is because people want a difficult reading experience, at least sometimes.'' Why his novel worked in 1980 and might not have worked ten years earlier or later, he admits, remains ``a mystery''.

Word count: approx. 230 words. Suitable for a 3-column Sunday Magazine story slot.

A model 230-word report is given above. It opens with a headline, gives Eco's self-description as a scholar in the lede, explains interstices and his narrative academic style in the middle, and closes with his analysis of The Name of the Rose's success. The report sequences by importance, preserves only the most vivid direct quotations, and lets Eco's own phrases (``interstices'', ``Sundays'', ``mystery'') do most of the characterisation.

Interview a person you admire is an activity question. The expected output is a written record of a real or semi-real interview. The answer below gives a four-stage method plus a short sample script.

• Stage 1: pick a subject worth the time. A neighbourhood postmaster, a senior teacher, a junior doctor at the local hospital, a long-serving school librarian, a kabaddi coach, all are richer subjects than a relative whose answers you can guess. Ask permission first; agree on a thirty-minute slot.
• Stage 2: prepare six to eight questions. The first two should warm the subject up (``How did you get into this line of work?''). The next four should probe substance (``What is the hardest thing about your day?'', ``What is the most rewarding moment you remember?''). The last two should be reflective (``What advice would you give a student who wants to do what you do?'').
• Stage 3: record carefully. If the subject permits, use a phone voice-recorder. Otherwise take notes in shorthand. Keep eye contact: a head buried in a notebook breaks the rhythm of conversation.
• Stage 4: transcribe and tidy. The verbatim transcript will have repetitions and false starts. Silvester's chapter and Padmanabhan's example both teach the same lesson: a transcript that respects the subject's voice is better than a tidied paraphrase. Remove only the ``ums'' and the obvious repetitions; keep the substance and the cadence.

Sample mini-script (excerpt of  120 words).

Interviewer: Sir, you have taught in this school for over thirty years. What keeps you here?

Mr. Rao (Maths teacher): (laughs) I keep asking myself that question every morning. The honest answer is the children. Every batch is different. The Class 12 board exam looks the same on paper every year, but the students who write it are completely new each time.

Interviewer: Has anything in the way you teach changed in those thirty years?

Mr. Rao: The blackboard is now a whiteboard. The students have phones. The textbook has been revised five times. But the way a child's face changes when an idea finally lands, that hasn't changed.

Pick a real person worth half an hour of their time, agree on a slot, prepare six to eight questions sequenced from warm-up to substance to reflection, record carefully (audio or shorthand), and transcribe so the subject's voice survives. The submitted answer should include three pieces: a one-line subject identification, the list of questions used, and a transcript or summary of the conversation that respects the subject's voice.