The Interview — 20 MCQs | CBSE Class 12 English Core (Code 301)

Chapter Overview

Two-part chapter. Part 1 (Silvester) explores the interview as a journalistic genre — its history (~130 years), its critics (Lewis Carroll's 'just horror'; V.S. Naipaul; Kipling; Márquez calling it 'vampirism') and its uses. Part 2 is Mukund Padmanabhan's interview with Umberto Eco, who insists he is a scholar first and uses life's 'interstices' to write.

Key Themes

Interview as intrusion vs serviceable medium
Writers' resistance — 'a part of themselves' lost
Eco's 'interstices' — empty time used productively
Scholar identity vs novelist fame

Key Concepts

Silvester

Editor of the Penguin Book of Interviews

Lewis Carroll

Had 'just horror' of interviewers

V.S. Naipaul

Felt interviews wound the subject

Eco's identity

Scholar first — semiotics professor at Bologna

Interstices

Empty pockets of time used for writing

The Name of the Rose

Eco's 1980 600-page novel — surprise bestseller

Sample MCQs

Q1. Which famous writer called interviews 'an unwarranted intrusion'?

A. Charles Dickens

B. Ernest Hemingway

C. V.S. Naipaul

D. George Orwell

V.S. Naipaul felt interviews wound the subject; Kipling, H.G. Wells, Saul Bellow held similar views.

Q2. What was Umberto Eco's primary professional identity?

A. A film director

B. A journalist for an Italian newspaper

C. A scholar — a professor of semiotics first; novelist as a 'side hobby'

D. A professional translator

Eco insisted he was a scholar first — a professor of semiotics at Bologna; novel-writing was 'side hobby'.

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