In a review of Michel Houellebecq's essay "H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" published in the "Los Angeles Times", April 17, 2005, Stephen King implies that Howard did not work at his craft and was merely Lovecraft. King described his disapproval of the sword and sorcery genre, and superheroes, in his book on writing "Danse Macabre": " is not fantasy at its lowest, but it still has a pretty tacky feel. ... Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless. The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his potbelly miraculously gone, his slack muscles magically transmuted into those "iron thews" which have been sung and storied in the pulps for the last fifty years." On Howard in particular, he wrote: