In an interview with Salon, Stephen King characterized his predecessor as best read by teenagers and other people "living in a state of total sexual doubt."

One writer I know, a winner of the World Fantasy Award and recipient of a trophy shaped like a bust of Lovecraft, will insist, when asked, that the statuette is of Jacques Cousteau.

Perhaps most tellingly, even the celebrity author brought in to write the notes for the Library of America collection, horror novelist Peter Straub ("Ghost Story"), confessed to Publishers Weekly that Lovecraft had "only a minimal influence" on him and that during his 20s, "being very literary and self-conscious about it," he had written Lovecraft off as inferior.

Take, for example, the fact that while Lovecraft is usually described as a forefather of modern horror fiction, his stories are, to put it bluntly, not very scary.

The truth, however, is that hardly any reader finds Cthulhu frightening.