CHAPTER 7 - THE INTERVIEW ( FLAMINGO)

                         CHAPTER 7 - THE INTERVIEW

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

           

 The students will be able to

·         identify the prominent personalities mentioned in the lesson.

·         define new words from the chapter with the help of vocabulary assistance provided to them in the   blog.

·         distinguish between positive and negative opinions about interviews

·         explain the reasons behind Umberto Eco’s literary merit

Good morning Gentlemen  

Welcome to the second blog of the chapter The Interview.

Day before yesterday you did some MCQs based on the portion explained in the blog. Today I will be sharing the answers to those MCQs for you to check your answers.

1. b. Interviewer

2. c. Choked and suffocated

3. b.  A supremely serviceable medium of communication

4. d. V.S. Naipaul 

5. a. Interview

            If all your answers are correct, well done! If they don’t then don’t worry, you might just want to read the notes again for better understanding.

   PART-2

             The focus of today’s blog is on the second part of the chapter. This is an actual interview of a writer named Umberto Eco.

                                      This man is Umberto Eco. He died in the year 2016.

               It is ironic that Umberto Eco hails from Italy, a country that has faced the most challenging times these past few months due to Corona Virus epidemic. He must be thanking God that he did not stay alive to see this.

This man has many acclaims to his name, some of which are –

1. A novelist

2. A writer of Children’s books

3. A philosopher

4. A literary critic

5. An essayist

6. An editor and translator of few books from French to Italian

7. Wrote academic texts

8. Wrote Newspaper articles

9. Known Pre-dominantly for his work on SEMIOTICS – The study of signs.

There is so much more to this man that would not fit in just a blog. However, let us now also look at the person who interviewed him -MukundPadmanabhan

            Mukund Padmanabhan has been the Editor of the newspaper  The Hindu from March 2016 and retired on February 28, 2019. He has a Masters in Philosophy and worked briefly as a lecturer at the University of Delhi before switching to journalism.

      Let us move ahead –

Before we look at the key points in part 2 of the chapter, here is the vocabulary that you might have come across while reading the chapter on your own. Just like in the previous blog we explored some new words and also looked at their extrapolatory meaning, we shall do the same here as well.

NEW WORD	MEANING	EXTRAPOLATION
Formidable	inspiring fear or respect	She is a formidable figure who commands a great deal of respect .
Semiotics	the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.	The semiotics of his body language revealed he was lying
Medieval aesthetics	the formal study of art, especially in relation to the idea of beauty related to the Middle Ages (= the period in European history from about AD 600 to AD 1500)	Medieval aesthetics refers to the general philosophy of beauty during the Medieval Period.
Staggeringly	astonishing	But with such a staggeringly high level of unemployment, a skill shortage is fast developing.
Intellectual superstardom	the state of being extremely famous in academics.	From there, his fame quickly accumulated into intellectual superstardom
Philosophical	a group of theories and ideas related to the understanding of a particular subject	You just have to be philosophical about losing some games, because you can’t win them all.
Ethical	relating to beliefs about what is morally right and wrong	Transplantation of organs from living donors raises ethical issues.
Interstices	a space between things or events	The wall was old and crumbling with plants growing in the interstices between the bricks
Spectacularly	in a very beautiful way that people admire	At night, the city is spectacularly lit.
Seminal	containing important new ideas that influence later developments	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is regarded as a seminal work of American literature
Delves	to search, especially as if by digging, in order to find a thing or information	She delved into her pocket to find some change
Yarn	a story, usually a long one with a lot of excitement or interest	He knew how to spin a good yarn (= tell a good story)
Metaphysics	the part of philosophy that is about understanding existence and knowledge	Metaphysics he held to be based on psychology.
Theology	the study of religion and religious belief	"At Padua," he said to a friend, "I studied law to please my father, and theology to please myself."
Cathedral	a very large, usually stone, building for Christian worship. It is the largest and most important church of a diocese	I was woken up by the chimes of the cathedral bells.

Miami vice:  Miami Vice is an American crime drama television series. The series ran for five seasons on NBC from September 16, 1984 to January 25, 1990.

Emergency room: Emergency Room is an American medical drama television series created by novelist and medical doctor Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning 15 seasons.

Since this is an interview, we will focus on the following points.

 SPECIALITY OF HIS WRITING STYLE

• Umberto’s non-fiction writing is

1. Playful

2. Very informal

3. Has a bit of his personal quality

4. Is very different from dry, regular, boring and detached from one’s self - academic style

4. Umberto Eco proves himself different from other students/young scholars

    He tells the story of his research in his essay.

    He even includes flaws, his struggles in coming up with that research essay.

• Umberto’s Academic writing style

 Has a narrative to it – a story line, a plot

• He never felt frustration of doing creative writing that was felt by another popular writer Roland Barthes (who died with the desire to do creative writing but could not)

• Umberto started writing novels by accident.

Umberto’s Areas of interest –

 Philosophical and ethical

In Academic works and Novels

 Children’s books are about non-violence and peace

 Umberto likes telling stories like a Chinese wise man

 The Name of the Rose (NOVEL)

a) Serious novel

b) A detective story

c) Book also talks about metaphysics, theology and medieval history

d) The novel gained huge popularity

e) Sold more than 15 million copies

f) Novel was for those readers who like difficult reading, not easy experiences

g) Success of the book is a mystery and very unpredictable

h) In fact publishers doubted it would sell more than 3000 copies

¨ Reason being no one knew about cathedrals and would know Latin

i) Journalists thought people only like trash writing and so they doubted that Umberto’s novel  would sell

  Short answer and long answer questions will be given in the next blog. till then keep learning .......

                                     

                                     HAPPY LEARNING, STAY SAFE