One of the more annoying things about readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror is the obnoxious double-bind in which they place themselves and their favorite writers. They'll howl at their college professors, at the publishing industry, at bookstores, and at the New York Times Book Review, demanding the respect they feel that their favorite books and stories deserve. Coming soon to a university near you: English 375: The Star Wars Novel and Its Discontents.

The bind is doubled because, when some element of the genre does receive attention among the misnamed "literary mainstream" (misnamed because the real mainstream is television and video games; reading is a hobby for eccentrics and the self-lobotomized) genre fans flip out. Case in point, the contretemps over the recent publication of a volume of H. P. Lovecraft's tales – named, brightly enough, Tales -- by the Library of America.

Even if you've never heard of the Library of America, you've likely seen its uniform volumes. Black covers; red white and blue horizontal stripes across the middle; a black-and-white photo of the author. Yeah, those things. Despite the cheap boards, the gimmicky bound-in bookmark, and the onion-thin paper better designed for long-term preservation than it is for present-day reading, the LoA edition is being perceived by Lovecraft fans as some Pretty Heavy Shit. Some have announced, before even seeing the book, that Tales is the Lovecraft collection to get. Others have wondered how on Earth Lovecraft could have become so popular among the mainstream. And a third group has huffed and puffed about its precious Lovecraft being so woefully mishandled by the Library. Gone, they fret, are the days when a maladjusted, pimple-faced little nerd can find a ratty Arkham House edition in the school library and have his mind blown so thoroughly by cosmic awe that his utter failure with the ladies won't even bother him until his mid-20s. Now Grandpa won't be read; instead he'll be taught in schools.

I wouldn’t worry about it. The Library of America edition of Lovecraft is decidedly "eh," and the Library of America in general is oriented toward libraries, with lesser emphasis on the trade and subscribers. Nor is the Library of America necessarily interested in building the canon, as can be seen both by the series itself and the editor Peter Straub's choice of stories. Library of America, while offering editions by such luminaries of the sort that used to be studied in literature departments back when literature was actually studied on the college level (Henry James, Nabokov, etc.) is actually a grab bag of Americana. Crime fiction is well represented by editions of Chandler and Hammett, and two volumes of noir fiction that include The Postman Always Rings Twice, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. A minor light like Dawn Powell earned two volumes so far, and Nathanael West has one, as well.

The Library of America isn't even universally concerned with literature: it collected speeches, memoirs, and notes from Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman and also offers volumes of reportage from both World War II and the Vietnam War. The Library of America is just about Americana--no more, no less. Lovecraft, for all his Anglophilia and posing to the contrary, was about as American as it gets. His old money left him early on, even if his affectations didn't. He married outside his class and religion, then quickly divorced. He was obsessed with the then-prominent aspects of pop culture -- the pulps -- and intellectualized about them endlessly in order to justify his attraction to the same. Lovecraft was a middlebrow striver, just as the Library of America itself is, so the match is a perfect one.

The volume itself is mediocre. If you already like Lovecraft, you have the stories. Straub simply selected a number of the S. T. Joshi edited/reconstructed tales, and included some notes on the texts. There are some gaps – neither "Cool Air" nor "He" has any notes in the Library edition, but both had voluminous notes in the Joshi/Shultz-edited collection From the Pest Zone: The New York Stories (Hippocampus Press, 2003). Because the Library is interested in preservation rather than presentation, Tales is not a best-of, either. The stories are presented roughly chronologically, with early clunkers like "The Lurking Fear" placed toward the front of the book – perfect to drive off any casual readers. It’s no surprise that Laura Miller, in her takedown of both Lovecraft and the LoA edition for salon.com tore that story to shreds. "The Lurking Fear" deserves it. "Herbert West—Reanimator" is also included, likely only to spark some recognition among folks who have seen the utterly forgettable cult movies. Of Lovecraft's latter work, "The Haunter of the Dark" didn't need inclusion, and a fair amount of Lovecraft's nonfiction could have been selected instead. In keeping with the Lovecraftian tradition, the title tries to make it, but doesn't quite. Lovecraft really entered the canon with the three Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics volumes that came out over the past few years anyway.

So, what's the fuss? It's the same old nonsense that kept Lovecraft himself waving away solicitations for novels from publishers, even while The Case of Charles Dexter Ward sat in his files, written but untyped. The attitude that kept ol' Grandpa in poverty, really. At the same time, Lovecraft puffed himself up as a proper gentleman who couldn't sully his golden words with the tedium of commercial hustling. It was a combination of low expectations and low self-esteem, masked in arrogance. With Lovecraftian fandom so used to being a put-upon minority, they can't help but expect the bucket-o'-pig's-blood welcome when they're finally invited to the prom. So goshdarnit, they didn't want to go to the prom anyway.

Now that decades of defensive literary criticism surrounding Lovecraft have made some headway, fans are curious, confused, and would almost like it if the old man were pulled back into the cobwebbed cardboard box up in the attic. And it's not because Lovecraft's stories won't hold up, but because the apparatus of fandom won't. The little fanzines, the typo-heavy criticism, the endless feuding; really, nobody is going to give two shits about all the baggage Lovecraft fandom will bring along with mainstream acceptance. Lovecraft himself made the mistake of being sucked into the proto-fandom of amateur journalism time and again, even as his professional career was beginning to develop. Even if you're only king of a shit heap, you still get to be king, right?