You have to read it in context. It was written around the time of World War 1, when movies were still in their infancy and radio was limited to maritime and military use. Evocative descriptive language was the norm, because people were not used to thinking visually and needed all that verbal detail to fill the imagination.
I went through much the same experience as the author, but I still think Tolkien was OK, even though I no longer enjoy reading him so much. Sure, he's turgid in places (the second chapter of the first volume of LOTR is easily the worst part of the whole book), but then so's a lot of Charles Dickens' work. I love Great expectations but still wince at the hackery of Hard Times...there's a reason nobody even tried to make a movie out of that one.
Oh, good catch. It was Tolkien who served in WW1, not his son. Sorry about that. And I'm not sure its right to emphasise the contemporary literature from his youth as I did, considering how much he was influenced by epic medieval poetry. I should know better, I did school projects on him.
I went through much the same experience as the author, but I still think Tolkien was OK, even though I no longer enjoy reading him so much. Sure, he's turgid in places (the second chapter of the first volume of LOTR is easily the worst part of the whole book), but then so's a lot of Charles Dickens' work. I love Great expectations but still wince at the hackery of Hard Times...there's a reason nobody even tried to make a movie out of that one.