Notes on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls"

Notes on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls"

Millenia of the oppressor's rituals.
    parasitical
    kidnapping the commoners

Devolution.

Ancestral memories: the narrator sees his family role (the Swineherd) in dreams once he moves into the renovated Exham Priory.

A cultish cabal at the heart of a benighted and powerful family.
    fed upon others as past of their continuous
    engagement over millenia on the site
    with the old rituals of the Magna Mater.

    a literal expression of social relations between high
    and low over many different types of
    economic system
        slave: Rome
        Medieval: Britain
        capitalist: United Kingdom

Archeology: Layers of ritual horror, one laid atop the other

The ARRAS in the round bedroom:
    How thin the arras of social reality between
    everyday apprehension of society
    and our historically [and genealogically] determined
    selves.

--

A tradition in Lovecraft's fiction:

Bad families
    Bad ancestors
        Bad patriarchs
            Bad progenitors

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
    Ward possessed by his ancestor Curwen.
   
"The Lurking Fear"
    A family degenerates into lightning-deranged subterranean
    cannibals over generations.

"The Unnameable"
    A thing kept in the attic beyond rational lifespan

"The Thing on the Doorstep"
    A wizard father inhabits the body of his married
    daughter?

A theme in Lovecraft: the past is a key to understanding the true horror
of our situation as peons in a galactic machine
of primal violence.

"The Rats in the Walls" is a great nay-saying.

In the world of the story, the FATHER, a rich Yankee magnate, ends up
in an asylum.  There is no place for his family's autarky today.

--

77 Ways of Looking at H. P. Lovecraft: Notes

I made these notes in May 2010, while making my way through the first volume of The Annotated Lovecraft.

--

moment of:
    production
    consumption

"irrationalism"

bourgeois
abnormal
irregular
outre
discouragement
severe
unknowable [Mach]
obstinate [style]
uninterested
remote
intensify
accumulate
abolish
disgust
exclude
un-tenderness
ecstasy
blemish


Of individual, class, society:
    tumultuous
    boredom
    ennui
    doldrums
    nearness
    chill

lively
inertia
idleness
anticipated
prepared
well-cooked
magnitude
RUIN
calamity
cunning
clever
un-mellow
periphery
peripheral [to "mainstream"]
immaculate
arrange
class
sort
order
collapse
nay-saying
contemplate
meditative
puzzle

The cherished beliefs
    degenerate
    decline

weaken
erode
unwholesome
exhausting
deficient
quirk
ambition
sensual
discouragement
pessimism
unconditional
despondent
despondency
dire
discontent
discontented
disavowal
vexed
vexing
discourage
dilapidation
frenzy
connoisseur
lucid
definitive
taxing

Leninism versus guerillaism

My rough-and-ready scan of pages 1-99 can be found here.

Behind the stock market plunge

http://www.workers.org/2013/06/24/behind-the-stock-market-plunge/

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Talk on Gracchus Babeuf and the communist idea (audio) | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

http://links.org.au/node/3372

When communists sell their newspapers

Fighting miners, hotel workers, Machinists sign up for ‘Militant’


BY LOUIS MARTIN
“ This paper needs to get around more,” coal miner Connie Jewell said as he signed up for a subscription to the Militant at the April 1 United Mine Workers union demonstration of more than 6,000 in Charleston, W.Va.

The action was called to protest moves by Patriot Coal to cut thousands of miners off health and pension plans and tear up union contracts. (See article on front page.)

Jewell was one of 27 participants who bought Militant subscriptions at the action. In addition, 46 single copies were sold, showing the interest by coal miners and their supporters in a socialist newsweekly that tells the truth about and backs the struggles of working people.

Two books on revolutionary working-class politics were also sold on the buses going to the event, including The Cuban Five: Who They Are, Why They Were Framed, Why They Should Be Free, one of eight books offered at reduced prices with a subscription to the Militant. (See ad below.)

Militant distributors from Seattle had a similar experience when they brought solidarity to the picket lines of members of International Association of Machinists Local 79 on strike against the Belshaw Adamatic Bakery Group in Auburn, Wash., selling seven subscriptions in two visits. The plant manufactures donut equipment. (See article on page 5.)

“It’s important to have a paper like this to see what is happening all over to working people,” said Josephine Ulrich, a shop steward who has worked 25 years at the plant. “I want to show it around. This is what unionization and solidarity is all about.”

On March 30 Militant supporters sold the paper door to door in Seattle and Kent, Wash., reported Edwin Fruit. They talked with working people about the impact of the bosses’ productivity drive, the bank crisis in Cyprus, the cuts in postal service and other political developments of interest to workers.

“I very much liked the fact that the Militant talked about what was happening to us, but I also wanted to support the paper. I also found the international news to be very interesting,” said Brigitte Malenfant when asked why she had decided to renew her subscription.

Malenfant is one of 180 hotel workers who have been on strike since Oct. 28 against the Hôtel des Seigneurs in Saint-Hyacinthe, about 30 miles northeast of Montreal. They are fighting for wage parity with hotel workers in Montreal.

Join the ongoing international effort to increase the circulation of the Militant among working people. You can call the distributors in your region (see directory on page 6) or order a bundle at themilitant@mac.com or (212) 244-4899. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7714/771406.html

A social movement in the Eastern coalfields?

W.Va.: Thousands protest Patriot’s attack on mine union, retirees
UMWA calls next action for April 16 in St. Louis

March in Charleston, W.Va., April 1 to protest slashing of medical benefits and pensions and tearing up of union contracts by Patriot Coal as part of company’s bankruptcy filing. 

BY ALYSON KENNEDY
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Some 6,000-7,000 coal miners, their families, and other workers poured into the Civic Center here April 1 in the largest mobilization of miners in many years. The action was the latest in a series of demonstrations organized by the United Mine Workers of America since August 2012 to fight Patriot Coal’s attempt to use bankruptcy to gut union contracts, pensions and health care.

“Corporate greed has taken over this country. This is a death sentence for retirees,” said Benny Parker, a member of the UMWA from Mannington, who retired in 2007 from Patriot’s Federal No. 2 Mine.

Many retired miners have black lung and other debilitating work injuries from decades in the mines and depend on what they thought were lifetime benefits set down in UMWA contracts since the 1940s.

More than 50 busloads of miners came from seven states. Hundreds drove up from southern West Virginia. The rally included both working and retired coal miners as well as union delegations, including from the United Steelworkers, United Auto Workers, Communications Workers of America, Ironworkers and the American Federation of Teachers.

Terry Steele, a retired miner from UMWA Local 1440, came to the rally from Matewan. He used to work at the Zeigler Old Ben Mine owned by Horizon. “In 2002 they filed for bankruptcy, just like Patriot’s doing. They got out of all their responsibilities,” he said.

In 2007 Peabody Energy spun off most of its union mines to form Patriot Coal Corp. A year later Patriot bought Magnum Coal Co., an Arch Coal spinoff. More than 90 percent of “Patriot” retirees today never actually worked for Patriot.

As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, Patriot Coal on March 14 asked a judge to sanction its plan to tear up union contracts and end benefits covering 10,000 retirees and their 13,000 dependents. Patriot’s bankruptcy takes place in the context of a recent contraction in domestic demand for coal, fueled in large part by falling natural gas prices.

There are no union mines left in Mingo County, W.Va., or Pike County, Ky., Steele said.

Both the number of coal miners and the proportion who are members of the UMWA has declined dramatically over recent decades. Only about one-quarter of working miners are members of the UMWA today, down from 43 percent in 1994. Today there are about 82,000 active miners in the U.S., down from some 89,000 in January of last year and from 175,000 30 years ago.

“The younger generation, a lot of us, were raised off the union,” said Jeff Samek, 29, a faceman at the Alpha Natural Resources Carmichaels Mine in Southwest Pennsylvania. “If Patriot does this every company will try it.”

Speakers at the rally included Democratic politicians from West Virginia, including Sen. Joe Manchin, Rep. Nick Rahall, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, in a videotaped message, promised to press for the Coalfield Accountability and Retired Employee Act, which would transfer money from the Abandoned Mine Lands fund, a government fund for restoration of mined land based on taxing coal production, to the UMWA 1974 Pension Plan.

The CARE Act is supposed to prop up the union’s pension plan — which faces insolvency as a result of declining unionization and funds lost through speculative investments — as well as cover retirees who lose benefits when coal bosses file for bankruptcy and reduce taxes on employer payments to benefit plans.

“What Patriot did was designed to fail so they could get rid of these liabilities,” Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, told the rally. “We won’t allow them to take the money and run. Anyone who pulls a paycheck, stand with us.”

Corey Bachman, 22, a member of Ironworkers Local 3 in Pittsburgh, said he and other workers have been on strike for eight months at Patriot Machining and Maintenance Services, which is not owned by Patriot Coal. “After we organized a union, they laid everybody off,” he said. “We have filed unfair labor practice charges.”

Steelworkers from Ravenswood came to the rally along with nurses from Bluefield, who recently formed a Nurses Union, and a van of UAW members from the Ford plant in Louisville, Ky.

“It’s going to affect all of us,” said Debbie Casey, a member of CWA Local 2204 from Castlewood, Va. She said the CWA, IBEW and UMWA brought five busloads to the rally.

“I support the UMWA in this,” said Larry Goodwin, 35, vice president of United Steelworkers Local 477 at a refractory plant in Buckhannon. He came with several others from the local. “We faced the same thing in my plant. We lost health care for retirees and current employees.”

“This is not just about the mine workers, UMWA President Cecil Roberts told participants. “This is a movement about the people.”

Following the speeches Roberts led the massive gathering out of the Civic Center, marching down the streets of Charleston to the headquarters of Patriot Coal. Chants of “U-M-W-A” and “We are union” broke out. Roberts and 15 other labor, civic and religious officials who had declared their intention to be arrested sat down in the street until cops took them away.

The next action will be in St. Louis on April 16 at 10 a.m. in front of Peabody Coal’s corporate headquarters.

http://www.themilitant.com/2013/7714/771401.html