Smith and Lovecraft have been compared exhaustively here and in general, but would it be inaccurate to say Smith's fiction as well as his personal circumstances had as much and probably more in common with Robert E. Howard's life and works? Both REH and CAS came into their 20s in extraordinary social isolation, resulting in anti-social tendencies that were more pronounced than Lovecraft's, and in their works, each author used three scenarios to their best advantage: Zothique, Hyperborea, and Averoigne vrs. the Hyborian world, Atlantis, and the Eighteenth Century. Whereas, none of the stories of Lovecraft's dream world are considered among his best. REH and CAS were more the aesthetic rebels than HPL as well, but the difference is in degree not in kind. Lovecraft criticism back in the day strained to and to a large extent succeeded in portraying him as a great innovator, despite the fact that he followed a more traditional gothic pattern. The cosmic imagery and its rhetorical accompaniment was really just necessary embellishment to the fantastic premises, taken too seriously in guaging the effect by critics like Mariconda, Schultz, Burleson (initially) and of course Joshi. It took Robert H. Waugh, a diffuse but much more interesting critic, to put the cliche "frightfulness" of a meaningless cosmos to bed.

jkh

That's an interesting and well-framed discussion topic, if you don't mind my saying so, Kipling!

(I don't see myself participating in the discussion, though.)

DN