Although he was married briefly, and many years later his former wife was moved to state, peculiarly, that he was an βadequately excellent lover,β it is clear from all available evidence that sexuality, procreation, and the human body itself were among the things that scared him the most.
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, whisperingβthe things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter listβ¦. The things that did not scare him generally are absent from his work.