Luc Sante on Lovecraft

(I don't know if it's a joke, but the website Worldroots features this image of Lovecraft as a child with his parents.)

Here is Luc Sante's hilarious list of things that frightened Lovecraft:

"He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list."

I'm looking forward to Luc Sante's book Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces, 1990-2005 which will be published in September by the excellent Yeti (part of a book series presented with Verse Chorus Press).

This quote comes from Sante's essay The Heroic Nerd in NYRB.

I thank my friend for pointing out my unfortunate similarity to Lovecraft, which caused me to finally read him.