NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English (Flamingo) The Interview: Summary & Question Answers (NCERT 2026–27)

Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Flamingo Chapter 7 – “The Interview” (Part I by Christopher Silvester; Part II, an interview of Umberto Eco by Mukund Padmanabhan). You get an original summary, theme and message, word meanings, and every textbook exercise – Think as you read, Understanding the text, Talking about the text, Noticing discourse linkers and signallers, Writing and Things to do – with the headings reproduced verbatim and each question answered in full, exam-ready style.

Class: 12 Subject: English Book: Flamingo (Prose) Type: Prose (Chapter 7) Author: Christopher Silvester / Umberto Eco Session: 2026–27
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About the Author

Christopher Silvester (born 1959) studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He worked as a reporter for the magazine Private Eye for ten years and wrote features for Vanity Fair. Part I of this lesson is an excerpt from his introduction to The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day, in which he surveys differing opinions about the interview as a form. Part II features Umberto Eco (1932–2016), an Italian professor at the University of Bologna who was already a celebrated scholar of semiotics, literary interpretation and medieval aesthetics before he turned to fiction. His 1980 novel The Name of the Rose sold over ten million copies. He is interviewed here by Mukund Padmanabhan of The Hindu.

Summary

Part I traces how the interview, invented a little over 130 years ago, has become a commonplace of modern journalism. Opinions about it vary sharply. Some praise it as, at its best, a source of truth and even an art; others – usually celebrities who feel like its victims – condemn it as an intrusion that diminishes them. Silvester compares this fear to the belief in some primitive cultures that a photograph steals a person’s soul. He cites several writers: V. S. Naipaul felt some people are ‘wounded’ by interviews; Lewis Carroll had ‘a just horror of the interviewer’ and never consented to one; Rudyard Kipling called interviewing immoral and a crime, though he had himself interviewed Mark Twain; H. G. Wells called it an ‘ordeal’ yet later interviewed Stalin; and Saul Bellow described interviews as ‘thumbprints on his windpipe’. Despite these objections, Silvester concludes that the interview is a “supremely serviceable medium of communication” that gives the interviewer unprecedented power and influence.

Part II is an extract from Mukund Padmanabhan’s interview of Umberto Eco. Eco explains that although he appears to do many things, he is really always pursuing the same set of ethical and philosophical interests through his academic work, novels and even children’s books. His secret of productivity is working in ‘interstices’ – the empty spaces of life, such as the minutes spent waiting for a lift. He says his scholarly writing has a narrative, personal quality because he tells the story of his research, including its trials and errors. He began writing novels late, around the age of fifty, almost by accident. Though world-famous as the novelist who wrote The Name of the Rose, he insists he is a university professor who writes novels on Sundays. He is not puzzled by the novel’s huge success, believing many readers enjoy difficult, demanding books; its remarkable popularity, he feels, remains a happy mystery of timing.

Theme & message

The lesson explores the interview as a powerful and double-edged genre of modern communication. Part I presents the debate over its ethics and value – whether it is an intrusion that diminishes people or a serviceable medium that shapes our impressions of others – and highlights the considerable power the interviewer wields. Part II demonstrates a graceful, intelligent interview in practice and offers a portrait of a thinker who values scholarship over celebrity, uses time creatively, and approaches both knowledge and fame with humility and humour. Together the parts ask readers to think critically about how information about personalities reaches us and at what cost to privacy.

Word meanings

Word / ExpressionMeaning
commonplaceordinary, very common
extravagant claimsexaggerated, excessive claims
despiseto look down on; to dislike intensely
unwarranted intrusionan unjustified interference
diminishesmakes smaller or less important
lionizedtreated as a celebrity; greatly admired
condemnatorystrongly disapproving
perpetratedcommitted (a wrong act)
ordeala painful, difficult experience
thumbprints on his windpipe(figurative) interviews felt like being choked / suffocated
serviceableuseful, helpful
unprecedentednever known or done before
formidable reputationan impressive, awe-inspiring standing
semioticsthe study of signs and symbols
aestheticsthe study of beauty and art
staggeringlyastonishingly; to a shocking degree
intersticessmall empty spaces or gaps (between things or moments)
depersonalisedmade impersonal; without a personal touch
dissertationa long research essay / thesis
seminalhighly original and influential
metaphysicsthe branch of philosophy dealing with reality and existence
yarna long, entertaining story

Think as you read

These questions appear in the margin of Part I in the NCERT textbook (reproduced verbatim, including the book’s own numbering).

1. What are some of the positive views on interviews?

ANSWERIn its highest form the interview is seen as a source of truth and, in its practice, an art. Denis Brian notes that our most vivid impressions of contemporaries today come through interviews – almost everything of moment reaches us through one person asking questions of another. Thus the interview is regarded as a supremely serviceable medium of communication.

2. Why do most celebrity writers despise being interviewed?

ANSWERMany celebrity writers see themselves as victims of the interview. They feel it is an unwarranted intrusion into their private lives and that it somehow diminishes them. Some believe it robs them of a part of themselves, much as primitive peoples fear a photograph steals the soul.

3. What is the belief in some primitive cultures about being photographed?

ANSWERIn some primitive cultures it is believed that if one takes a photographic portrait of somebody, one is stealing that person’s soul.

6. What do you understand by the expression “thumbprints on his windpipe”?

ANSWERThe expression, used by Saul Bellow, is a metaphor suggesting that being interviewed felt like being choked or strangled. It conveys the discomfort, pressure and loss of freedom an interviewee can feel under the interviewer’s probing questions, as if a hand were pressing on his throat.

5. Who, in today’s world, is our chief source of information about personalities?

ANSWERIn today’s world, the interviewer – and the interview itself – is our chief source of information about personalities. As Denis Brian points out, almost everything of importance reaches us through one person asking questions of another.

Understanding the text

1. Do you think Umberto Eco likes being interviewed? Give reasons for your opinion.

ANSWERYes, Umberto Eco appears comfortable with and even enjoys being interviewed. He answers Mukund Padmanabhan’s questions openly, patiently and with warmth and humour – laughing, telling stories ‘like a Chinese wise man’ and sharing personal anecdotes about his dissertation and his friend Roland Barthes. He does not show irritation or treat the interview as an intrusion; instead he uses it as an opportunity to explain his ideas. This relaxed, engaging manner suggests he does not despise interviews the way the writers in Part I do.

2. How does Eco find the time to write so much?

ANSWEREco works in what he calls ‘interstices’ – the empty spaces or gaps in everyday life. Just as eliminating the empty spaces in the universe would shrink it to the size of his fist, he believes our lives are full of unused empty moments. He puts these to work; for instance, while waiting for a visitor’s lift to come up from the first to the third floor, he can already write an article. By using such small gaps productively, he manages to produce a staggering amount of work.

3. What was distinctive about Eco’s academic writing style?

ANSWEREco’s academic writing has a playful, personal and narrative quality, which marks a departure from the usual academic style that is depersonalised, dry and boring. Instead of merely listing hypotheses, corrections and conclusions, he tells the story of his research, including his trials and errors. He adopted this approach at the age of 22, when a professor pointed out that he had ‘told the story’ of his research, and it has given his essays a story-like, engaging character ever since.

4. Did Umberto Eco consider himself a novelist first or an academic scholar?

ANSWERUmberto Eco considered himself first and foremost an academic scholar, not a novelist. He describes himself as “a university professor who writes novels on Sundays,” and insists this is not a joke. He attends academic conferences rather than meetings of Pen Clubs and writers, and identifies himself with the academic community. Writing novels, he says, was something he began late and almost by accident, even though it reached him a far larger audience.

5. What is the reason for the huge success of the novel, The Name of the Rose?

ANSWEREco does not give a single, fixed reason. He rejects the journalists’ and publishers’ assumption that people only like easy, trashy reading, arguing that a large number of readers actually enjoy difficult, demanding experiences. He partly attributes the success to its serious, demanding nature and its medieval setting, but ultimately he calls the success a mystery – one that depended on timing, since the same book written ten years earlier or later might not have worked. Nobody, he says, can predict such success.

Talking about the text

Discuss in pairs or small groups. Sample responses are given below to guide discussion.

1. Talk about any interview that you have watched on television or read in a newspaper. How did it add to your understanding of the celebrity, the interviewer and the field of the celebrity?

ANSWER (sample)A well-conducted interview I watched with a noted scientist revealed her personality – her humility, curiosity and sense of humour – in a way her formal research never could. The interviewer’s thoughtful, well-prepared questions drew out clear, honest answers and showed that a good interviewer guides rather than dominates the conversation. The interview also explained her field in simple terms, helping me understand the importance of her work. Thus it deepened my understanding of the celebrity, my respect for the interviewer’s skill, and my knowledge of the subject. (Share your own example in class.)

2. The medium you like best for an interview, print, radio, or television.

ANSWER (sample)Each medium has its strengths. Print interviews allow careful, edited answers and can be re-read at one’s own pace. Radio adds the warmth of the human voice, its tone and pauses, while letting the listener imagine. Television is the most vivid: it shows facial expressions, body language and reactions, making the celebrity feel real and present. I prefer television because it captures the personality most fully, though print is best for depth and accuracy. (State and justify your own preference.)

3. Every famous person has a right to his or her privacy. Interviewers sometimes embarrass celebrities with very personal questions.

ANSWER (sample)Fame does not cancel a person’s right to privacy. Celebrities are public in their work, but their personal lives, families and private feelings deserve respect. Interviewers who pry into intimate matters to create sensation cross an ethical line and can hurt the very people who trust them. As Part I shows, writers like Kipling and Naipaul resented such intrusion. A good interviewer balances the public’s curiosity with sensitivity, asking searching but respectful questions and avoiding those that merely embarrass. (Develop both sides in discussion.)

Noticing discourse linkers and signallers

This activity asks you to notice how the utterances of the interviewer and the interviewee are linked to one another, and how shifts in topic are signalled.

Linkers

Linking is achieved either through reference pronouns (‘that’, ‘this’, ‘which’, etc.) or through the repetition of words. Notice how each reply picks up a word or idea from the previous turn:

ANSWERReference pronouns: “I am always doing the same thing.” → “Which is?” → “Aah, now that is more difficult to explain.” Here ‘which’ and ‘that’ both refer back to ‘the same thing’.Similarly, “…I have already written an article!” → “Not everyone can do that…” – where ‘that’ refers to writing in the empty spaces.Repetition of words: “…at least more than 20 of them…” → “Over 40.” → “Over 40!” The phrase ‘Over 40’ is repeated to carry the topic forward and to express surprise.These linkers keep the conversation cohesive, so the interview reads as a smooth, connected stretch of text rather than a set of unrelated statements.

Signallers

When the speaker shifts the topic, he prepares the listener with a signalling phrase. Notice the two examples taken from the interview:

ANSWER“Which brings me to another question…” – signals that the interviewer is moving on to a new question.“But let me tell you another story…” – signals that the speaker is about to begin a fresh anecdote.Without such preparatory signallers, the flow of ideas in the conversation would not be smooth and continuous; they help the listener follow the change of direction.

Writing

If the interviewer Mukund Padmanabhan had not got the space in the newspaper to reproduce the interview verbatim, he may have been asked to produce a short report of the interview with the salient points. Write this report for him.

SAMPLE REPORTUmberto Eco: The Professor Who Writes Novels on SundaysUmberto Eco, the celebrated University of Bologna professor and author of The Name of the Rose, met The Hindu for a wide-ranging conversation. Though admired for his enormous and varied output – over forty scholarly works, novels, essays and children’s books – Eco insists he is really always pursuing one thing: the same set of ethical and philosophical interests.His secret of productivity, he revealed, is working in ‘interstices’, the empty spaces of daily life; he can write an article in the minutes it takes a visitor’s lift to arrive. He traced his distinctive, narrative academic style to a professor’s remark on his doctoral thesis, and said he began writing novels only at about fifty, almost by accident.Despite worldwide fame as a novelist, Eco identifies himself with the academic community, calling himself “a professor who writes novels on Sundays.” He was unsurprised by the mass success of The Name of the Rose, arguing that many readers welcome difficult books, though he conceded that its extraordinary popularity remains a mystery of timing.

Things to do

Interview a person whom you admire either in school or your neighbourhood and record it in writing.

ANSWER (guidance)This is an activity to be completed individually. Choose someone you admire – a teacher, a sportsperson, a shopkeeper, a doctor or a community helper. Prepare 8–10 clear questions in advance (about their background, work, challenges, proudest moment and advice to students). Begin with simple questions to put them at ease, listen carefully, and use linkers and signallers to connect one question to the next. Note their answers faithfully and then write the interview up in a question-and-answer format, with a short introduction about the person.

Extra questions

Short answer (30–40 words)

1. From which book is Part I of ‘The Interview’ taken?

ANSWERPart I is an excerpt from Christopher Silvester’s introduction to The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day, which he edited.

2. Why did Lewis Carroll never consent to be interviewed?

ANSWERLewis Carroll, the creator of Alice in Wonderland, had ‘a just horror of the interviewer’. It was his dread of being lionized that made him repel interviewers, autograph-seekers and other would-be acquaintances.

3. What did Kipling say about being interviewed?

ANSWERKipling called the interview immoral – a crime and an assault deserving punishment, cowardly and vile. Ironically, he had himself interviewed Mark Twain a few years earlier.

4. What does Eco mean by ‘interstices’?

ANSWERBy ‘interstices’ Eco means the empty spaces or small gaps in everyday life – such as the minutes spent waiting for a lift – which he uses productively to write, explaining his enormous output.

5. Why was Eco’s American publisher surprised by the sales of The Name of the Rose?

ANSWERShe had expected to sell no more than 3,000 copies in a country where, she felt, nobody had seen a cathedral or studied Latin. In the end the novel sold two or three million copies in the U.S.

Long answer (100–120 words)

6. “The interview is a double-edged medium.” Discuss with reference to Part I of the lesson.

ANSWERChristopher Silvester presents the interview as a form that provokes opposite reactions. On the one hand, it is praised as a source of truth and an art, and is described by Denis Brian as the chief way our vivid impressions of contemporaries reach us, giving the interviewer unprecedented power and influence. On the other hand, many celebrities – Naipaul, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, Wells and Saul Bellow – despise it as an intrusion that wounds or diminishes them, comparing it to soul-stealing photographs or ‘thumbprints on the windpipe’. Silvester thus shows the interview as double-edged: a supremely serviceable medium of communication that can also feel like an assault on a person’s privacy and dignity.

7. Sketch the personality of Umberto Eco as revealed in Part II of the lesson.

ANSWERUmberto Eco emerges as a brilliant yet humble and witty thinker. Despite his fame and his enormous output of scholarly and creative work, he sees himself as a university professor who merely ‘writes novels on Sundays’, identifying with the academic community rather than literary circles. He is supremely productive, using the empty ‘interstices’ of life to work. His mind is original: he tells the story of his research, giving even academic writing a personal, narrative charm. He is honest about beginning novels late and by accident, generous in praising his friend Barthes, and refreshingly unpretentious – enjoying ordinary television in the evenings. His humour, modesty and intellectual depth make him memorable.

MCQs & Assertion–Reason

1. Part I of ‘The Interview’ is written by:

(a) Umberto Eco   (b) Christopher Silvester   (c) Mukund Padmanabhan   (d) Denis Brian

2. About how long ago was the interview invented, according to Silvester?

(a) 50 years   (b) 200 years   (c) a little over 130 years   (d) 90 years

3. Who described interviews as being like ‘thumbprints on his windpipe’?

(a) H. G. Wells   (b) Rudyard Kipling   (c) Saul Bellow   (d) Lewis Carroll

4. According to some primitive cultures, taking a person’s photograph:

(a) brings good luck   (b) steals their soul   (c) doubles their life   (d) curses the photographer

5. Umberto Eco was a professor at the University of:

(a) Rome   (b) Cambridge   (c) Bologna   (d) Milan

6. Eco’s field of scholarship, the study of signs, is called:

(a) semantics   (b) semiotics   (c) aesthetics   (d) linguistics

7. The empty spaces of life that Eco uses to work are called:

(a) intervals   (b) interstices   (c) intermissions   (d) intervals of grace

8. Which novel brought Eco ‘intellectual superstardom’ in 1980?

(a) Foucault’s Pendulum   (b) The Name of the Rose   (c) The Time Machine   (d) The Island of the Day Before

9. Eco describes himself as:

(a) a novelist who teaches   (b) a journalist   (c) a professor who writes novels on Sundays   (d) a full-time writer

10. The interviewer of Umberto Eco in Part II is:

(a) Denis Brian   (b) David Lodge   (c) Mukund Padmanabhan   (d) Roland Barthes

Answer key: 1-(b), 2-(c), 3-(c), 4-(b), 5-(c), 6-(b), 7-(b), 8-(b), 9-(c), 10-(c)

Assertion–Reason – choose: (a) A and R true, R explains A; (b) A and R true, R does not explain A; (c) A true, R false; (d) A false, R true.

1. Assertion (A): Many celebrity writers despise being interviewed.

Reason (R): They feel the interview is an unwarranted intrusion that diminishes them.

2. Assertion (A): Umberto Eco is able to produce a staggering amount of writing.

Reason (R): He works in the empty spaces, or ‘interstices’, of everyday life.

3. Assertion (A): Eco considers himself primarily a novelist.

Reason (R): He identifies with the academic community and attends academic conferences.

4. Assertion (A): Silvester finally calls the interview a serviceable medium of communication.

Reason (R): Through interviews, our most vivid impressions of contemporaries reach us.

5. Assertion (A): Eco was puzzled by the huge success of The Name of the Rose.

Reason (R): Journalists and publishers wrongly believe that people like trash and dislike difficult reading.

Answer key: 1-(a) both true, R explains A; 2-(a) both true, R explains A; 3-(d) A is false (he sees himself as a scholar first), R is true; 4-(a) both true, R explains A; 5-(d) A is false (Eco was not puzzled – the journalists were), while R is true.

Exam tips

Score better in ‘The Interview’

• Remember the lesson has two distinct parts: Part I is a general essay on interviews (writers’ views, the ‘serviceable medium’ conclusion); Part II is a specific interview of Umberto Eco. Examiners often mix them up – keep names straight: Silvester (author of Part I), Eco (interviewee), Padmanabhan (interviewer).

• Learn the key terms exactly: interstices, semiotics, ‘thumbprints on the windpipe’, ‘professor who writes novels on Sundays’.

• For long answers, quote a short phrase to support your point and always link it to the theme – the interview as a powerful but debated medium.

• Write to length: short answers in 30–40 words, long answers in 120–150 words, in clear, formal English.

FAQs

Who wrote ‘The Interview’ in Class 12 Flamingo?

Part I is by Christopher Silvester, taken from his introduction to The Penguin Book of Interviews. Part II is an interview of Umberto Eco conducted by Mukund Padmanabhan of The Hindu.

What does Umberto Eco mean by ‘interstices’?

He means the small empty spaces or gaps in daily life – like the minutes spent waiting for a lift – which he uses productively to write, explaining how he produces so much work.

Why do many celebrities dislike interviews?

They feel interviews are an unwarranted intrusion into their private lives that diminishes them, much like the primitive belief that a photograph steals a person’s soul.

Questions are taken verbatim from the NCERT Flamingo textbook; summaries and answers are written originally by ClearStudy. No copyrighted lesson text is reproduced.

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