Summary

Part I (by Christopher Silvester) reflects on the interview as a journalistic form. Though only about 130 years old, the interview has become a commonplace of journalism. Opinions of it vary sharply: some celebrities — Naipaul, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, H.G. Wells, Saul Bellow — have dreaded it as an intrusion that wounds or diminishes them, while others prize it as "a supremely serviceable medium of communication" that gives the interviewer great power (Denis Brian).

Part II (Mukund Padmanabhan's interview with Umberto Eco) shows the interview in action. Eco explains how he writes so much by using the interstices — the empty spaces of daily life; insists he is "a university professor who writes novels on Sundays," an academic first; describes his narrative, story-telling scholarly style; and admits that the huge success of his difficult novel The Name of the Rose remains "a mystery."

Themes: the ethics and value of the interview; the power of the interviewer over the interviewed; the disciplined use of time and life's "empty spaces"; and the identity of the scholar who also writes fiction.

Key figures: Christopher Silvester (author of Part I), Umberto Eco (the interviewee of Part II), Mukund Padmanabhan (the interviewer), with several celebrities (Naipaul, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, Wells, Bellow) cited in Part I for their dislike of interviews. …