My very first interview, at Columbia:
Interviewer: So what books are you reading now, and please don't say The World According to Garp.
Me: (thinking, What's with the Irving grudge?) I'm reading the Lord of the Rings just to read it before the movie comes out.
I: Yes, my son is doing that too. What does the ring do?
Me: (thinking, AHa! I know this one!) It makes you invisible.
I: And what else?
Me: (thinking, ok, concrete didn't work, time to get allegorical)Well, there's a lot of metaphorical references to the ring being connected to 'the great eye of Sauron' so it can also be interpreted as an instrument of vision as well as an instrument of invisibility.
I: And what else?
Me: (thinking, oh crap, I thought that last one was pretty good.)
Well, uh, the ring also warps the mind of its wearer after time, it becomes a focus of extreme jealousy, and because of that sort of jealousy, a source of isolation.
I: And what else?
Me: Well, the short poem at the beginning of the book also says that the ring also binds the other, lesser rings together, so it has an element of ruling power as well.
I: Ah, yes, I had forgotten that. And what else?
Me: (feeling like a real dork at this point, and really scraping the bottom of the barrel) Well, returning to the vision theme, the wearer is also taken out of the world of sunlight and brought into a sort of shadow world... but I'm getting the sense that's not what you're looking for.
I: The wearer of the ring never gets older.
Me: Ah, that's right, I'd forgotten that.
I: That's because you're not worried about getting old.
He then went on to talk about fears of aging and dying in his older patients and sort of implied that I was shallow for not thinking of it.
I got waitlisted in the end.