[j. d. worthington]

I agree with you that it's sad REH is seen almost exclusively for that, when he wrote a rather large variety of things; and even with his heroic fantasy, he's often judged by those who haven't read much of his work on the worst aspects of it, rather than the best (which, as Fritz Leiber pointed out, were often very good; he compared "The People of the Black Circle" favorably, for instance, to some of the lesser Elizabethans).

I do agree that REH deserves a better reputation than he has, but he may be on the verge of that, with the newer editions of his work, the scholarly tomes coming out on him, and in general a renewed interest in him as both a fantaisiste and a regionalist (and sometimes a combination of both).

Glad to hear you're finding HPL a little easier going. And yes, he is a very dense writer, in many ways; and his style is also in several ways a reflection of his 18th-century favorites -- something that is even more notable in his verse, where he was almost wedded to the heroic couplet for a great deal of his writing life. (When he did break away from this form -- and not all of his pieces in this vein are bad; some of his satires and even some of his pastorals vary between rather good to very good -- his verse could be quite powerful, as with his Pindaric ode "On a Battlefield in Picardy" or his fantastic poetry, especially the Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets and the like.)

Tolkien, of course, simply may not be to your taste; and there are times when his prose can be a bit pedestrian, but that is seldom really the case. Most often, he casts his prose in the form very well suited for his purposes, and it can vary from the almost childish tone of the earlier parts of LotR (reminiscent of The Hobbit for some very good reasons, reasons connected to the development of the tale and the characters' growth), to the really quite poetic "high" tone of many later parts of the book (especially those concerning Gondor and, in a somewhat different poetic vein, those concerning Rohan), to the very poignant (some of the things involving Lothlorien; several bits in Ithilien; the moments when we see the "lost hobbit" in Gollum, etc.). But Tolkien sometimes requires careful reading to truly appreciate the subtleties of his prose, whereas Howard wrote much more simply, to be read more quickly, and with the knowledge that he was writing for a wider range of audience, from young boys to octagenarians, and often paid much less attention to the stylistic subtleties and niceties that can make prose itself a richer experience.

Again, this is not always the case. Sometimes the innate poet in Howard came through -- I think particularly of some of the passages of "Beyond the Black River", for instance; where the use of language and imagery, especially the hints of the supernal, numinous, and mystically menacing are so suggestive and contain hints of such vistas that it can take your breath away. But (again), in general, that constraint to write fast action-oriented prose (and the fact he died so young) kept him from developing that to the level of which he was capable.