Monday- Friday January 14-18 com

Monday / Tuesday January 14/ 15: notes for two styles of interviews

Turn ins: On Tuesday, send along your notes based upon the two interviews you selected. See the checklist below for what you should be looking for with your notes

               On Friday,  send along your completed compare and contrast essay, which has been developed upon your notes.

                

                Remember that Friday is the last day to turn in any work for this marking quarter.

             

                For anyone who receives extended time, make sure I have your essay by Sunday evening.

                                                    Elvis Costello

Malcolm X

                                                    Adolf Hitler

You are going to read two interviews.

 Everyone reads the Malcolm X interview. This is a Q and A interview (question and answer)

      Then..

you will choose  one of the story interviews:

 either the Elvis Costello, an English singer song writer, who is routinely listed in the 100 greatest artists of all times  or the one on Hitler. The interviews are longish, and the expectation is that your do not skim, but read everything. That is why you have two days. Please read silently- and independently. Some of what they say may be disturbing. Remain open-minded and focus on the language and technique. 

What are you doing with the two interviews you are reading?

1. On Monday and Tuesday, January 14/ 15,  you have class time to read and take notes. 

2. This  Wednesday/ Thursday / Friday, January 16/ 17/ 18, you are writing a compare and contrast essay of a minimum of 350 words on the Malcom X interview and either the Elvis Costello or Hitler interview.

 In order to prepare for this, open a work document and start collecting the information you will need to write this.

Begin by creating a  graphic organizer that includes the information listed below.

 You will share with me a copy of your detailed notes by midnight on Tuesday. This material will be used to write your essay. Label the assignment: interview notes. You will use these notes to write a compare / contrast essay Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This will consist of approximately 350 words / Times New Roman / size 12 font / MLA heading. The essay will be by midnight Friday, with the exception of those who receive extended time. Theirs will be due on Sunday; however. As there is no school on Monday, and I am grading ELA exams next week, NO WORK WILL BE ACCECPTED AFTER Friday! 

 Both the copious notes and essay will count in the writing category. 

Checklist of what you should be looking for:

 1. Note the types of questions used (see below; look for examples from the interviews.

2. word choices / diction of the interviewer (select a few and make an analytical observation- remember these are notes; you do not need complete sentences.)

3. comments on the surroundings; how does this set the tone and / or establish the relationship between the interviewer and interviewee

4. how they handled delicate questions (like what?)

5. how they demonstrated they were listening and attuned to Malcolm X and Costello or Hitler. 

6. In the Costello or Hitler interview, how were the interviewee's words integrated into the story interview. 

7. Make sure to include textual examples. Note that you can copy and paste from the interviews directly into your notes. This will save time.

Like I said, you will be able to use your notes, so take lots of them.  Copy and paste from the text as needed. Reflect on what you heard  in the Ted Talk.

Once again: you are reading only two interviews. You must read the question / answer one of Malcolm X; then you will read a story type of interview. This is either the musician Elvis Costello or Hitler.

The Malcolm X Interview

A PLAYBOY CLASSIC: ALEX HALEY INTERVIEWS MALCOLM X

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. One witness to the hail of gunfire that killed him was his then four−year old daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, who has now, at age 34, has been implicated in a plot to kill her father’s bitter rival, Louis Farrakhan. In light of the continuing controversy over Malcolm X’s death, and life, we now offer visitors the opportunity to read the great spiritual and political leader’s own account of his beliefs, as recounted in a May 1963 PLAYBOY INTERVIEW. The questioner was the late Alex Haley, who would go on to co−author The Autobiography of Malcolm X before completing his own masterpiece of African−American literature, ROOTS. Many will be shocked by what he has to say; others will be outraged. Our own view is that this interview is both an eloquent statement and a damning self−indictment of one noxious facet of rampant racism. As such, we believe it merits publication−−and reading.

PLAYBOY: What is the ambition of the Black Muslims?

MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up−−morally, mentally and spiritually−−and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating, fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He’s cleaning up the mess that white men have made. He’s saving the Government millions of dollars, taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the black man’s economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging−−for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education.The white man doesn’t want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black man where he can be watched and retarded. Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man’s full potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the Black Muslims’ goal of obtaining "several states" is a practical vision?

MALCOLM X: Well, you might consider some things practical that are really impractical. Wasn’t it impractical that the Supreme Court could issue a desegregation order nine years ago and there’s still only eight percent compliance? Is it practical that a hundred years after the Civil War there’s not freedom for black men yet? On the record for integration you’ve got the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court−−but show me your integration, where is it? That’s practical? Mr. Muhammad teaches us to be for what’s really practical−−that’s separation. It’s more natural than integration.

PLAYBOY: In a recent interview, Negro author−lecturer Louis Lomax said, "Eighty percent, if not more, of America’s 20,000,000 Negroes vibrate sympathetically with the Muslims’ indictment of the white power structure. But this does not mean we agree with them in their doctrines of estrangement or with their proposed resolutions of the race problem." Does this view represent a consensus of opinion among Negroes? And if so, is it possible that your separationist and anti−Christian doctrine shave the effect of alienating many of your own race?

MALCOLM X: Sir, you make a mistake listening to people who tell you how much our stand alienates black men in this country. I’d guess actually we have the sympathy of 90 percent of the black people. There are 20,000,000 dormant Muslims in America. A Muslim to us is somebody who is for the black man; I don’t care if he goes to the Baptist Church seven days a week. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that a black man is born a Muslim by nature. There are millions of Muslims not aware of it now. All of them will be Muslims when they wake up; that’s what’s meant by the Resurrection. Sir, I’m going to tell you a secret: the black man is a whole lot smarter than white people think he is. The black man has survived in this country by fooling the white man. He’s been dancing and grinning and white men never guessed what he was thinking. Now you’ll hear the bourgeois Negroes pretending to be alienated, but they’re just making the white man think they don’t go for what Mr. Muhammad is saying. This Negro that will tell you he’s so against us, he’s just protecting the crumbs he gets from the white man’s table. This kind of Negro is so busy trying to be like the white man that he doesn’t know what the real masses of his own people are thinking. A fine car and house and clothes and liquor have made a lot think themselves different from their poor black brothers. But Mr. Muhammad says that Allah is going to wake up all black men to see the white man as he really is, and see what Christianity has done to them. The black masses that are waking up don’t believe in Christianity anymore. All it’s done for black men is help to keep them slaves. Mr. Muhammad is teaching that Christianity, as white people see it, means that whites can have their heaven here on earth, but the black man is supposed to catch his hell here. The black man is supposed to keep believing that when he dies, he’ll float up to some city with golden streets and milk and honey on a cloud somewhere. Every black man in North America has heard black Christian preachers shouting about "tomorrow in good old Beulah’s Land." But the thinking black masses today are interested in Muhammad’s Land. The Promised Land that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad talks about is right here on this earth. Intelligent black men today are interested in a religious doctrine that offers a solution to their problems right now, right here on this earth, while they are alive.You must understand that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad represents the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy to us. In the Old Testament, Moses lived to see his enemy, Pharaoh, drowned in the Red Sea−−which in essence means that Mr. Muhammad will see the completion of his work in his lifetime, that he will live to see victory gained over his enemy.

PLAYBOY: Are you referring to the Muslim judgment day which your organization’s newspaper, MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, calls "Armageddon" and prophesies as imminent?

MALCOLM X: Armageddon deals with the final battle between God and the Devil. The Third World War is referred to as Armageddon by many white statesmen. There won’t be any more war after then because there won’t be any more warmongers. I don’t know when Armageddon, whatever form it takes, is supposed to be. But I know the time is near when the white man will be finished. The signs are all around us. Ten years ago you couldn’t have paid a Southern Negro to defy local customs. The British Lion’s tail has been snatched off in black Africa. The Indonesians have booted out such would−be imperialists as the Dutch. The French, who felt for a century that Algeria was theirs, have had to run for their lives back to France. Sir, the point I make is that all over the world, the old day of standing in fear and trembling before the almighty white man is gone!

PLAYBOY: If Muslims ultimately gain control as you predict, what do you plan to do with white people?

MALCOLM X: It’s not a case of what would we do, it’s a case of what would God

do with whites. What does a judge do with the guilty? Either the guilty one repents and atones, or God executes judgment.

PLAYBOY: You refer to whites as "the guilty" and "the enemy"; you predict divine retribution against them; and you preach absolute separation from the white community. Do not these views substantiate the fact that your movement is predicated on race hatred?

MALCOLM X: Sir, it’s from Mr. Muhammad that the black masses are learning for the first time in 400 years the real truth of how the white man brainwashed the black man, kept him ignorant of his true history, robbed him of his self−confidence. The black masses for the first time are understanding that it’s not a case of being anti−white or anti−Christian, but it’s a case of seeing the true nature of the white man. We’re anti−evil, anti−oppression, anti−lynching. You can’t be anti−those things unless you’re also anti−the oppressor and the lyncher. You can’t be anti−slavery and pro−slave master; you can’t be anti−crime and pro−criminal. In fact, Mr. Muhammad teaches that if the present generation of whites would study their own race in the light of their true history, they would be anti−white themselves.

PLAYBOY: Are you?

MALCOLM X: As soon as the white man hears a black man say that he’s through loving white people, then the white man accuses the black man of hating him. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad doesn’t teach hate. The white man isn’t important enough for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his followers to spend any time hating him. The white man has brainwashed himself into believing that all the black people in the world want to be cuddled up next to him. When he meets what we’re talking about, he can’t believe it, it takes all the wind out of him. When we tell him we don’t want to be around him, we don’t want to be like he is, he’s staggered. It makes him re−evaluate his 300−year myth about the black man. What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people do they hate him. That takes a lot of nerve.

PLAYBOY: How do you reconcile your disavowal of hatred with the announcement you made last year that Allah had brought you "the good news" that 120 white Atlantans had just been killed in an air crash en route to America from Paris?

MALCOLM X: Sir, as I see the law of justice, it says as you sow, so shall you reap.The white man has reveled as the rope snapped black men’s necks. He has reveled around the lynching fire. It’s only right for the black man’s true God, Allah, to defend us−−and for us to be joyous because our God manifests his ability to inflict pain on our enemy. We Muslims believe that the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God’s divine wrath. All civilized societies in their courts of justice set a sentence of execution against those deemed to be enemies of society, such as murderers and kidnappers. The presence of 20,000,000 black people here in America is proof that Uncle Sam is guilty of kidnapping−−because we didn’t come here voluntarily on the Mayflower. And 400 years of lynchings condemn Uncle Sam as a murderer.

PLAYBOY: To return to your statement about the plane crash, when Dr. Ralph Bunche heard about it, he called you "mentally depraved." What is your reaction?

MALCOLM X: I know all about what Dr. Bunche said. He’s always got his international mouth open. He apologized in the UN when black people protested there. You’ll notice that whenever the white man lets a black man get prominent, he has a job for him. Dr. Bunche serves the white man well−−he represents, speaks for and defends the white man. He does none of this for the black man. Dr. Bunche has functioned as a white man’s tool, designed to influence international opinion on the Negro. The white man has Negro local tools, national tools, and Dr. Bunche is an international tool.

PLAYBOY: Dr. Bunche was only one of many prominent Negroes who deplored your statement in similar terms. What reply have you to make to these spokesmen for your own people?

MALCOLM X: Go ask their opinions and you’ll be able to fill your notebook with what white people want to hear Negroes say. Let’s take these so−called spokesmen for the black men by types. Start with the politicians. They never attack Mr. Muhammad personally. They realize he has the sympathy of the black masses. They know they would alienate the masses whose votes they need. But the black civic leaders, they do attack Mr. Muhammad. The reason is usually that they are appointed to their positions by the white man. The white man pays them to attack us. The ones who attack Mr.Muhammad the most are the ones who earn the most. Then take the black religious leaders, they also attack Mr. Muhammad. These preachers do it out of self−defense, because they know he’s waking up Negroes. No one believes what the Negro preacher preaches except those who are mentally asleep, or in the darkness of ignorance about the true situation of the black man here today in this wilderness of North America. If you will take note, sir, many so−called Negro leaders who once attacked the Honorable Elijah Muhammad don’t do so anymore. And he never speaks against them in the personal sense except as a reaction if they speak against him. Islam is a religion that teaches us never to attack, never to be the aggressor−−but you can waste somebody if he attacks you. These Negro leaders have become aware that whenever the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is caused by their attack to level his guns against them, they always come out on the losing end. Many have experienced this.

PLAYBOY: Do you admire and respect any other American Negro leaders−−Martin Luther King, for example?

MALCOLM X: I am a Muslim, sir. Muslims can see only one leader who has the qualifications necessary to unite all elements of black people in America. This is the Honorable Elijaj Muhammad.

PLAYBOY: Many white religious leaders have also gone on record against the Black Muslims. Writing in the official NAACP magazine, a Catholic priest described you as "a fascist−minded hate group," and B’nai B’rith has accused you of being not only anti−Christian but anti−Semitic. Do you consider this true?MALCOLM X: In so far as the Christian world is concerned, dictatorships have existed only in areas or countries where you have Roman Catholicism. Catholicism conditions your mind for dictators. Can you think of a single Protestant country that has ever produced a dictator?

PLAYBOY: Germany was predominantly Protestant when Hitler −−−−

MALCOLM X: Another thing to think of−−in the 20th Century, the Christian Church has given us two heresies: fascism and communism. Where did fascism start? Where’s the second−largest Communist party outside of Russia? The answer to both is Italy. Where is the Vatican? But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti−Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti−Semite. Let me say just a word about the Jew and the black man. The Jew is always anxious to advise the black man. But they never advise him how to solve his problem the way the Jews solved their problem. The Jew never went sitting−in and crawling−in and sliding−in and freedom−riding, like he teaches and helps Negroes to do. The Jews stood up, and stood together, and they used their ultimate power, the economic weapon. That’s exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is trying to teach black men to do. The Jews pooled their money and bought the hotels that barred them. They bought Atlantic City and Miami Beach and anything else they wanted. Who owns Hollywood? Who runs the garment industry, the largest industry in New York City? But the Jew that’s advising the Negro joins the NAACP, CORE, the Urban League,and others. With money donations, the Jew gains control, then he sends the black man doing all this wading−in, boring−in, even burying−in−−everything but buying−in. Never shows him how to set up factories and hotels. Never advises him how to own what he wants. No, when there’s something worth owning, the Jew’s got it. Walk up and down in any Negro ghetto in America. Ninety percent of the worthwhile businesses you see are Jew−owned. Every night they take the money out. This helps the black man’s community stay a ghetto.

PLAYBOY: Isn’t it true that many Gentiles have also labored with dedication to advance integration and economic improvement for the Negro, as volunteer workers for the NAACP, CORE and many other interracial agencies?

MALCOLM X: A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it,usually end up in the frying pan. All these things dangled before us by the white liberal posing as a friend and benefactor have turned out to be nothing but bait to make us think we’re making progress. The Supreme Court decision has never been enforced. Desegregation has never taken place. The promises have never been fulfilled. We have received only tokens, substitutes, trickery and deceit.

PLAYBOY: What motives do you impute to PLAYBOY for providing you with this opportunity for the free discussion of your views?

MALCOLM X: I think you want to sell magazines. I’ve never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man’s primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man’s interest is to make money, to exploit.

Now you are choosing to read either the Elvis Costello interview OR the Hitler interview. These are story style interviews.

ELVIS COSTELLO INTERVIEW

Be aware that this is a British interview, so some of the spelling is different.

     Vancouver, on a sun-dappled Saturday afternoon, seems an unlikely place to meet Elvis Costello. It feels too much at ease, too lacking in sharp edges. All morning, I've been walking in Stanley Park, dodging the joggers and cyclists circling the waterfront with its tethered yachts and pleasure boats, while relistening to a selection from Costello's 33 albums on a loop through my headphones. The soundtrack doesn't fit, quite. Though he is capable of the full range of human emotion, the staples of "guilt and anger" that he identified once early in his career "after 14 Pernods" as his songwriting stock-in-trade remain dominant themes.
The voice is not always used in the attack mode that has long made it such an insistent weapon, but it still carries an unrivalled degree of hurt and vitriol when required.Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Elvis Costello National Ransom Decca (UMO) 2010

 You'd hesitate, in this sense, to suggest that Costello had mellowed; he still, no doubt, has little desire to venture in the vicinity of Chelsea; even so, when I meet him in a cafe near the water, he cuts a chipper figure – all gap-toothed smiles and heavy specs and winklepickers and carrying his silver fedora in a toughened box.

Contrary to appearances, as he sits down among the latte drinkers in their chinos and leisurewear, he says he has rarely felt more at home than he has here.Most of that has to do with his third-time-around marriage, to the Canadian jazz singer Diana Krall. After our interview, he explains, he has to dash home to look after his twin four-year-old boys. Krall is playing in Lima, Peru, so he is the stay-at-home dad for a weekend. They have been married seven years now and absences still seem to be making hearts grow fonder."We have a lot of time apart, which makes for a lot of longing," he says. "Monday night will be great when Diana is home and we can be a family with the boys until one of us has to leave again. That seems to keep things alive, for us anyway."

He appears, I suggest, for someone who, in his public persona at least has always looked a little at odds with the world, to be more content than he has ever been. He flinches a little at the thought. "I don't know if content is the right word," he says. "Content is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling."How about happiness? I ask. For a long while, in his songs at least, simple happiness seemed to be the state he most distrusted."Not now," he says. "I think when I was younger I experimented on myself in various ways and with various poisons. But now I look after myself all I can."

Costello is 56. "Obviously, when you have four-year-old sons at my age you hope you'll be around as long as possible. And my wife is 10 years younger than me, so I don't want her to be dragging me round in a wheelbarrow at any point. You've got to be on your toes a bit."Costello warms easily to his theme of domestic bliss. Over the summer, he says, every week or so his and his wife's tour schedules would cross. "I'd get to see the lads on her bus, and travel with them for a day or two, then peel off and go to do my show. It was a bit like The Partridge Family. She was David Cassidy; I was Shirley Jones. Anyway, our life here is the opposite of moving out to the sticks and closing the curtains and thinking: that's me done now."To prove the point, even by his own workaholic standards, Declan Patrick MacManus is currently in a rich moment of productivity. His new album, National Ransom, will be his third in as many years.

Over the summer, he has been performing live with his two "regular" bands, the Imposters (an evolution of his original Attractions) and the Sugarcanes (the wild and whirling bluegrass-tinged group he assembled for his last album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane). There have also been recent stage outings with the Brodsky Quartet, the classical ensemble he has worked with for 15 years now, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. In June, he was in the UK for a brief tour; I saw him play a memorable solo show at the Royal Festival Hall in London for Meltdown: two hours with only half-a-dozen guitars for company.In between times, he has also developed his alternative career as a chat-show host in two series of Spectacle, a sort of The Old Grey Whistle Test meets Parky, in which he interviews and plays with a musical hall of fame: Smokey Robinson, Bruce Springsteen, the Police (who he also supported on a comeback tour), Elton John and so on.Having over the years followed particular passions one after the other – writing orchestral music, collaborating with the likes of Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach – Costello now seems to be pursuing everything all at the same time. Is that how he likes it?"Just to do rock'n'roll shows would seem like a confinement to me," he suggests. "I like not having to choose one thing or another. Life for me is about movement. I do what my dad and my grandfather both did. I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale..."

Costello refers to his troubadour heritage several times in our conversation; as he gets older, he likes the idea of himself as having inherited the family firm; it roots him. His grandfather spent decades in the orchestras at northern concert halls until the arrival of talkies ended his career. His father was the lead singer with Joe Loss's big band in the 1950s. Some of Costello's earliest memories are of hearing his father practise that week's new songs in their front room."He'd have a bunch of things to learn and I have a very vivid sensory memory of feeling the glass door to the front room vibrating when he practised them over and over."Costello's mother ran the record section of Selfridge's in London, so there was always a variety of music in the house. I wonder when the 60s first became apparent at home, when he first heard Bob Dylan (with whom he has toured a couple of times in recent years)?"It would have been 1962," he says. "Strangely enough, this English lord brought us the first Dylan record to hear. This man was the brother of our neighbour and a Labour peer. I don't recall his name, but he came to visit this spinster who lived downstairs from us and he insisted on bringing this record up to play to my father."What did his old man make of it?"I think my folks were a bit bewildered by it, because it wasn't like anything we had heard. By that point, I had missed rock'n'roll completely. If it came on the radio, my dad would turn it off – not because he didn't approve or anything, just because he didn't think it was any good. It wasn't hip. He was listening to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. By the time I had control of the radio, rock'n'roll had passed us by: Chuck Berry was in jail, Jerry Lee had been thrown out of the country, Elvis was in the army. We were left with Cliff."

Costello believes music is a commitment to openness, to never stopping hearing. His mother, now in her eighties and one of his keenest critics, will still listen to anything. "I had grown up with the names Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, for example," he says. "So when I got to the point I might be disposed to them, I understood it. The same with classical music – you have to live with it for a few years until it works on you."Not surprisingly, given his unique education, his latest album references at least a century of song. As if to prove the point, he is releasing versions both on 78rpm vinyl and digital download. It makes tacit links between the Depression era and our current financial apocalypse – the "national ransom" of the title track – and stops off at many places in between.To emphasise this journey, Costello has added the time and place of his songs to his sleeve notes. Thus "Jimmie Standing in the Rain", a poignant little song about a cowboy singer in the northern clubs, is footnoted "Accrington, 1937"; "One Bell Ringing", meanwhile, carries the note "London underground – 22nd of July 2005" which alerts you to the fact that it is a lament for the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. In the past, Costello has allowed his songs to be more loosely allusive, so why the sudden specificity?"I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location," he says. "That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow. I'm not sure I started writing any of them with exactly those times and place in mind, but that's where they seemed to want to end up. It's an unconscious process a lot of it, but I thought it was interesting to note it."The album has an apocalyptic feel in parts, particularly on tracks such as "Stations of the Cross", which alludes to the New Orleans floods and Bible Belt preachers in Costello's impacted poetry.

 Listening to him over the years, I've often wondered how much the language and texture of his youthful Catholicism influenced his writing – he has suggested elsewhere that the "smell of frankincense" has never really left his clothes; is he a frustrated sermoniser at heart?He laughs. "I went to Catholic school and went to church as a kid and – perhaps unusually – I only have good memories of it. The people in cloth I knew were mostly gentle and dedicated, and not some sort of conflicted, twisted people who were trying to frighten you or worse. I was named after a priest, I look a bit like a priest, I wear black a lot, but I think I had worked that one out by the time I was 10. Maybe I'd be more a fallen priest, a priest in a Graham Greene story."Does the aforementioned "guilt and anger" have its root in some of those years?"Certainly when I was younger I used to like to think that those emotions were the forces working on me, partly because it gave me ways of thinking about things that were perhaps harsher than my actual life. That's useful for a writer. It's like going on the lash when you are 13 and not being old enough to buy a drink."He can still summon that anger, for a song such as "National Ransom", which drips contempt for the carnage wrought by Wall Street; does he feel it just as strongly?"Well," he says, with the air of a connoisseur, "anger isn't just one thing, is it? I mean, there is dismay, which we all experience, then there's more violent anger, and then there is a grumpiness that we might go in and out of. Anger covers a lot of ground. Some of it is very useful, some of it completely useless. I think I can recognise the distinctions."His Menezes song plays with a lot of those shadings; it's not a protest song exactly, more an attempt to get inside the paranoia of the event. Is that the tone he was looking for?"It was one of those songs that wrote itself," he says, "and I realised what was being said as I wrote it. Some of the images in it have nothing to do with the specific case. It is more the fact that this killing by the police could have happened to any one of us and that is a strange place for Britain to have got to. It wasn't trying to place blame, just to capture that state that we live in."Does he still feel, living away from Britain, that it is his subject?"I read the news," he says, "like we all do."Listening to Costello play the Royal Festival Hall in the summer, I was struck by the idea that Costello always sounds better under a Tory government. It's where he found his voice. Songs such as "Shipbuilding" – his complex, lyrical response to the Falklands war and the implications of our industrial heritage – both defined and deconstructed their era. His relationship with his home country in the years since has been troubled. He was widely reported in 2005 as saying that he never wanted to play in Britain again, that his audiences there didn't warm to him or respect him. Does he still feel that way?"That was a sort of game of the media," he says. "It was something about me forsaking the country to come here. But in fact it is 20 years since I lived in the UK. I left for Dublin 20 years ago. Some flippant remarks I had made became exaggerated to 'I hate Britain' in the press. Which was both comical and not much of a surprise."Costello, perhaps, was not forgiven by the music press who wanted him to stay forever as a kind of lyrical punk agitator and not go off to write for string quartets. "If you depart from what people know you for, then of course you run the risk of horrifying them," he admits. "But that's not the end of the world." His productivity has in many ways counted against him in this respect. Everyone has to buy your first or your second original album. But your 33rd?If Costello has never made it to the national treasure status he deserves at home, he is, however, fast acquiring it in North America. Spectacle was a prime time hit in most of the world; bizarrely, in Britain, it was scheduled at midnight ("I guess they only thought it was fit for drunks to watch," he says. "Which struck me as odd.") One of his guests, a long-term fan, was Bill Clinton. In August, Costello also had the privilege of not only meeting Barack Obama, but also playing for him. The event, at the White House, was in honour of Paul McCartney; Elvis played "Penny Lane" with the Beatle and the president facing him in the front row. No pressure there then?He smiles. "Paul was great. He sat in that room all afternoon while we were rehearsing, so that cut down the intimidation factor by about 50%. But still it was pretty weird playing 'Penny Lane' to him in that room with George and Martha Washington on the wall and a marine in full dress uniform playing the piccolo trumpet."Even so, and whatever your view of Obama's policies, it was, he suggests, an infinitely more enjoyable occasion than that experienced by his wife at the White House when she was invited to play in honour of Tony Bennett by Obama's predecessor. "There was to be a cocktail party in the evening with George W and Condi and the gang. Diana remembers looking in at the gym in the basement when it was about to start and seeing everyone else who was due to go on also hiding down there, unable to face it like her. So, it was better than that."When he set out, 30-odd years ago, did he ever imagine he'd be playing the White House – 1977 must seem like another life entirely?Recently, he says, the BBC wanted to make a documentary about the strange journey of his career, but he wasn't convinced. One of the oddest things, he says, was that they had no real footage of him playing until about 1989. "All the Top of the Pops stuff before that they didn't trust anyone to play their own instruments. I mean, there is a certain kitsch appeal to that, but not much."He'd prefer to tell the story through his own famous lenses. He's working on a memoir, which is progressing slowly ("every day I write the book" would be stretching it, he suggests). "I have lots of sketches," he says. "But it won't be an exhaustive kind of thing. I really liked Bob Dylan's book. It may have been fantastically exasperating for the kind of fan who wanted the map reference for the 'Gates of Eden', but it told the story of how he became himself and how he became himself again."In looking for a way to structure it, he is half-thinking about using the songs he has written as chapters. That, though, may present problems of its own. "Many people build a career on just one or two songs," he says, with a degree of pride and self-mockery. "I have 400 of the fuckers."

Hitler interview

"No room for the alien, no use for the wastrel"

This edited interview of Adolf Hitler by George Sylvester Viereck took place in 1923. It was republished in Liberty magazine in July 1932

"When I take charge of Germany, I shall end tribute abroad and Bolshevism at home."

Adolf Hitler drained his cup as if it contained not tea, but the lifeblood of Bolshevism.

"Bolshevism," the chief of the Brown Shirts, the Fascists of Germany, continued, gazing at me balefully, "is our greatest menace. Kill Bolshevism in Germany and you restore 70 million people to power. France owes her strength not to her armies but to the forces of Bolshevism and dissension in our midst.

"The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St Germain are kept alive by Bolshevism in Germany. The Peace Treaty and Bolshevism are two heads of one monster. We must decapitate both."

When Adolf Hitler announced this programme, the advent of the Third Empire which he proclaims seemed still at the end of the rainbow. Then came election after election. Each time the power of Hitler grew. While unable to dislodge Hindenburg from the presidency, Hitler today heads the largest party in Germany. Unless Hindenburg assumes dictatorial measures, or some unexpected development completely upsets all present calculations, Hitler's party will organise the Reichstag and dominate the government. Hitler's fight was not against Hindenburg but against Chancellor Bruening. It is doubtful if Bruening's successor can sustain himself without the support of the National Socialists.

Many who voted for Hindenburg were at heart with Hitler, but some deep-rooted sense of loyalty impelled them nevertheless to cast their vote for the old field marshal. Unless overnight a new leader arises, there is no one in Germany, with the exception of Hindenburg, who could defeat Hitler - and Hindenburg is 85! Time and the recalcitrance of the French fight for Hitler, unless some blunder on his own part, or dissension within the ranks of the party, deprives him of his opportunity to play the part of Germany's Mussolini.

The first German Empire came to an end when Napoleon forced the Austrian emperor to surrender his imperial crown. The second empire came to an end when William II, on the advice of Hindenburg, sought refuge in Holland. The third empire is emerging slowly but surely, although it may dispense with sceptres and crowns.

I met Hitler not in his headquarters, the Brown House in Munich, but in a private home - the dwelling of a former admiral of the German Navy. We discussed the fate of Germany over the teacups.

"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

"Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

"We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."

Hitler himself is not a purely Germanic type. His dark hair betrays some alpine ancestor. For years he refused to be photographed. That was part of his strategy - to be known only to his friends so that, in the hour of crisis, he could appear here, there, and everywhere without detection. Today he could no longer pass unrecognised through the obscurest hamlet in Germany. His appearance contrasts strangely with the aggressiveness of his opinions. No milder mannered reformer ever scuttled ship of state or cut political throat.

"What," I continued my cross-examination, "are the fundamental planks of your platform?"

"We believe in a healthy mind in a healthy body. The body politic must be sound if the soul is to be healthy. Moral and physical health are synonymous." "Mussolini," I interjected, "said the same to me." Hitler beamed.

"The slums," he added, "are responsible for nine-tenths, alcohol for one-tenth, of all human depravity. No healthy man is a Marxian. Healthy men recognise the value of personality. We contend against the forces of disaster and degeneration. Bavaria is comparatively healthy because it is not completely industrialised. However, all Germany, including Bavaria, is condemned to intensive industrialism by the smallness of our territory. If we wish to save Germany we must see to it that our farmers remain faithful to the land. To do so, they must have room to breathe and room to work."

"Where will you find the room to work?"

"We must retain our colonies and we must expand eastward. There was a time when we could have shared world dominion with England. Now we can stretch our cramped limbs only toward the east. The Baltic is necessarily a German lake."

"Is it not," I asked, "possible for Germany to reconquer the world economically without extending her territory?"

Hitler shook his head earnestly.

"Economic imperialism, like military imperialism, depends upon power. There can be no world trade on a large scale without world power. Our people have not learned to think in terms of world power and world trade. However, Germany cannot extend commercially or territorially until she regains what she has lost and until she finds herself.

"We are in the position of a man whose house has been burned down. He must have a roof over his head before he can indulge in more ambitious plans. We had succeeded in creating an emergency shelter that keeps out the rain. We were not prepared for hailstones. However, misfortunes hailed down upon us. Germany has been living in a veritable blizzard of national, moral, and economic catastrophes.

"Our demoralised party system is a symptom of our disaster. Parliamentary majorities fluctuate with the mood of the moment. Parliamentary government unbars the gate to Bolshevism."

"Unlike some German militarists, you do not favour an alliance with Soviet Russia?"

Hitler evaded a direct reply to this question. He evaded it again recently when Liberty asked him to reply to Trotsky's statement that his assumption of power in Germany would involve a life-and-death struggle between Europe, led by Germany, and Soviet Russia.

"It may not suit Hitler to attack Bolshevism in Russia. He may even look upon an alliance with Bolshevism as his last card, if he is in danger of losing the game. If, he intimated on one occasion, capitalism refuses to recognise that the National Socialists are the last bulwark of private property, if capital impedes their struggle, Germany may be compelled to throw herself into the enticing arms of the siren Soviet Russia. But he is determined not to permit Bolshevism to take root in Germany."

He responded warily in the past to the advances of Chancellor Bruening and others who wished to form a united political front. It is unlikely that now, in view of the steady increase in the vote of the National Socialists, Hitler will be in the mood to compromise on any essential principle with other parties.

"The political combinations upon which a united front depend," Hitler remarked to me, "are too unstable. They render almost impossible a clearly defined policy. I see everywhere the zigzag course of compromise and concession. Our constructive forces are checked by the tyranny of numbers. We make the mistake of applying arithmetic and the mechanics of the economic world to the living state. We are threatened by ever increasing numbers and ever diminishing ideals. Mere numbers are unimportant."

"But suppose France retaliates against you by once more invading your soil? She invaded the Ruhr once before. She may invade it again."

 "It does not matter," Hitler, thoroughly aroused, retorted, "how many square miles the enemy may occupy if the national spirit is aroused. Ten million free Germans, ready to perish so that their country may live, are more potent than 50 million whose will power is paralysed and whose race consciousness is infected by aliens.

"We want a greater Germany uniting all German tribes. But our salvation can start in the smallest corner. Even if we had only 10 acres of land and were determined to defend them with our lives, the 10 acres would become the focus of regeneration. Our workers have two souls: one is German, the other is Marxian. We must arouse the German soul. We must uproot the canker of Marxism. Marxism and Germanism are antitheses.

"In my scheme of the German state, there will be no room for the alien, no use for the wastrel, for the usurer or speculator, or anyone incapable of productive work."

The cords on Hitler's forehead stood out threateningly. His voice filled the room. There was a noise at the door. His followers, who always remain within call, like a bodyguard, reminded the leader of his duty to address a meeting.

Hitler gulped down his tea and rose.