Literary merit vs. entertainment value

[Prospero]

Are SF/F books read for their literary merit or for their entertainment value? What kind of expectations do you have for a book to fulfil either criteria? What makes a "good" sf/f book (with regard to these categories) or is there no general criteria for this? What about the Hugo awards - in being determined by the World Science Fiction Society, which criterion are they probably based on?

What I mean by literary merit is the quality of being meaningful, using as many of the resources a writer has available — symbolism, historical or social fact, character development, etc. — in order to enlighten or provide insight to the life that we do live.

What I mean by entertainment value is the quality of captivating ones attention, making one want to read more, being unpredictable, etc.

These qualities are of course not mutually exclusive, but I am interested in whether sf/f works generally subjugate one quality to the other. For example, if concerned only with entertainment value, a work will include symbolism only if it will add to the entertainment value.

As I noted in my recent introductory post, I am entirely new to the genre.

 

[Grunkins]

SF and fantasy are no different than any other genres (including the literary genre) in this regard.

 

[Extollager]

Let me take your thoughtful comment a little farther. Reading fiction and poetry should provide pleasure. Perhaps the question is what kind of pleasure is provided by a given story, which implies the kind of reading suited to that story.

I'll use some non-sf examples first -- stories that almost everyone may have read.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes atmospheric, suspenseful story "The Speckled Band" has provided me with pleasure every time I have read it, and that's perhaps a dozen times. But the story seems to provide only the pleasure of escape reading. This implies relatively casual reading, although the mind may be pleasantly engaged with the story's puzzle. If I read the story more alertly, several serious flaws appear. Surely the central idea, of the trained snake that crawls through a ventilator grate, down a dummy bell pull, onto a bed bolted to the floor of an adjoining room, there to bite fatally a sleeping womna, and then to crawl back the way it came -- is preposterous. I may enjoy the sense of my own cleverness in seeing through the story's weakness, but that's not a specifically literary pleasure. The same observations would apply to Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," etc.

Now let's take Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter." This story can be read as an escape story. You have a sinister old man, a weird garden, a beautiful femme fatale, a legendary setting -- there's much that should have invited the brush of a Pre-Raphaelite painter. If you read the story casually, though, you may feel that the pace is too slow. Some readers will want Beatrice, the young woman whose touch causes pain or death, to amp up her allure because they like to fantasize about vampire-type women, etc. But if you read the story alertly, it has much to offer beyond escape. It deals with perennial human concerns and there's genuine wisdom here, so that the story offers what could be called interpretation.

The escape / interpretation distinction is that of Laurence Perrine. Note: Perrine recommended that we think in terms of a spectrum, with escape at one end and interpretation at the other. Any given story may then provide pleasure, but is the element of escape predominant or does the story invite, or even require, the disciplined attention that interpretive fiction justifies and rewards?

The question then may be: does a given sf story offer nothing but escape, or does it offer genuine insight, engaging us deeply with perennial human concerns -- or, likely enough, the story should be placed somewhere other than at the extremes along a continuum or spectrum of literature?

Speckled Band
O----X------------------------------------------------------------O
Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation

Rappaccini's Daughter
O-----------------------------------------------------X-----------O
Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation

One can have interesting inner debates or discussions about where to place the mark for a given story. The good thing is that this kind of thinking gets us back into the story.

My own experience suggests that much sf does tend to the escape end of the spectrum.

A related topic is: Supposing the story seems intended to elicit thoughtful reading, does it, in fact, deserve that? Or is it pretentious, i.e. making an implied claim for thoughtful reading that it doesn't deserve?

I have recently reread Rider Haggard's Victorian yarn She. The long-lived, beautiful Ayesha speaks for many pages about Life, etc. You can see that Haggard wants to suggest the insight of a quasi-immortal being who has lived for some 2000 lonely years, pondering the meaning of things. Unfortunately Haggard was not up to the task. One has to take the intention for the deed,* that's for sure. As escape literature, his yarn is a great success. More, it really does partake of myth, but in myth the meaning is in the imagery (including the figures of the story -- one hardly wants to call them characters) and actions. Ovid doesn't attempt to suggest the wisdom of Artemis/Diana by having her dispense thousands of words of her thoughts.

So would it now be appropriate for everyone to offer suggestions about sf and fantasy stories in which the escape element predominates, and of other stories that invite, even require, alert, attentive reading in order that we shall be rewarded with insight into perennial human concerns? But let's all be careful not to be fooled the way Haggard may have fooled some of his readers and himself! A story that seems intended to provide nothing but escape may thus be "better" in a way than a story that seems intended to provide insight but is just badly written, with the "insight" content not integrated into the story, or the insight content seeming fallacious, etc., etc.

*I don't mean that one takes the intention for the deed in assessing the merit of the book. I mean that one "plays along" with Haggard. Haggard meant Ayesha to sound wise; very well, let's continue reading the story, pretending that what she is saying is wise.

One could argue that Haggard achieves something subtle here: his Ayesha has had 2000 years to think about life, and yet this is all that she has come up with -- so Haggard must have intended us to infer that he thinks that, human nature being what it is, it wouldn't matter if we had 2000 years to mull things over, we'd still be stuck with our vanity, etc. and would not necessarily become wise. I think that may well be true; unfortunately, I don't think Haggard intends his readers to take Ayesha's talk (of which there is much) thus ironically. To be sure, he means us to see her as still wrung by her passions and tormented by love for her lost Kallikrates, but I think he did intend her also to be a sage.

On might discuss characters in fantasy and sf who really are convincing as sages. Gandalf in LOTR convinces me. Mr. Raven, in MacDonald's Lilith, is wonderful! Offhand I'm not thinking of any examples in sf.

 

[hitmouse]

Good question and 2 excellent replies.

I am with Grunkins on this.

Imagine a continuum (this is a bit contrived, admittedly) with pure escapism at one extreme and pure literary merit at the other. Both extremes are rather unsatisfying, and there has to be some balance between the two. Most fiction falls towards the entertainment side, mainly because that is more profitable and a bit easier to write.

Owlcroft, who I haven't seen around for some time, developed a metric which was interesting, even if I dont agree with it. His discussions on this subject are detailed and worthwhile nonetheless:
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works: Site Front Page

This discussion always reminds me of the English class in Dead Poet's Society where the merits of various writers are plotted on a graph.

 

[Extollager]

An analogy: escape fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to fast food: uncomplicated, predictable, easily enjoyed in solitude; "interpretive" fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to a really fine dinner: it mustn't be rushed; it provides uncommon satisfaction, and it's something you want to share with one or more other people.

For eleven years, I hosted a community reading group whose participants were mostly retirement-age people. We read Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gaskell, Trollope, etc. Everyone enjoyed our hour of conversation.

I don't think it would have worked to have an hour a week, week after week (we met around 20 weeks per year, fall and winter to early spring) to read and discuss examples escape fiction. Can you imagine getting together to discuss your favorite escape stories in a weekly situation like this? Ten weeks of one-hour sessions to discuss _____________________?

 

[psikeyhackr]

What I mean by literary merit is the quality of being meaningful, using as many of the resources a writer has available — symbolism, historical or social fact, character development, etc. — in order to enlighten or provide insight to the life that we do live.

Joanna Russ addressed this question about science fiction 39 years ago.

Joanna Russ- Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction

A lot of the "literary people" talk as though the science and ideas about science in SF are irrelevant. I regarded Catcher in the Rye as irrelevant.

This may be a C. P. Snow kind of thing.

psik

 

[Abernovo]

I share Grunkin's opinion on this. I read across genres, including literary, and don't see any of them as different. They're all read for various reasons, by different people.

Perhaps similar to Extollager, I could say that not only is it a spectrum, but that more than one purpose can be served, depending upon the reader. Will Shakespeare is rammed down the throats of children in school, sometimes destroying the magic of his work for life because it's put across as 'literary greatness', not (also) as the equivalent of 24 on TV, or even (sorry ) Twilight - media for the masses, putting bums on seats. Okay, if you look deeper, there's a lot of subtlety, probably not found in those examples above, but he knew he had to get people to pay, or he wouldn't be writing much longer. And, many of those people were interested in escaping for a couple of hours.

Likewise, there's literary merit in much sff fiction, even if it's viewed by some as only entertainment. The real trick is to get the mix - make the reader think without them realising. At the same time, there's nothing wrong with a good bit of escapism. Giving someone pleasure through a good story at the end of a hard day is a pretty amazing gift and, just maybe, you might inspire them to write their own stories, or do something special and good in their own life.


EDIT: What Kmq says below:

I'd rather we all just got to enjoy the books we like to read

 

[Kissmequick]

An analogy: escape fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to fast food: uncomplicated, predictable, easily enjoyed in solitude; "interpretive" fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to a really fine dinner: it mustn't be rushed; it provides uncommon satisfaction, and it's something you want to share with one or more other people.

I'm not so sure.

Different people derive different pleasures from reading the same book. Some people adore puzzling out symbolism etc. I rarely even notice it and I'd rather spork my eyes out that look for it. I love the emotions that a good work can conjure in me, others would rather throw themselves under a bus. And if I'm not enjoying a book for the pleasure it's giving me, I won't finish it, no matter how deep and meaningful it is. So for me, the emotional escape reading is like the fine dinner that I will savour, and the interpretive fiction is the thing I'll look at on the menu before deciding on something else, because lobster = yuck. Now if a book gives me emotional escape enjoyment AND happens to have something deep and meaningful to say, then that's a bonus. (Also reading escapist books will not make you stupid ion the same way that fast food makes you fat Though someone did try to tell me they would once...)


In other words, as long as people enjoy the book they are reading, however they derive that pleasure, it's all good and no one sort of enjoyment is any better than the other. Saying that one sort is "better" smacks of elitism to me (though I'm sure that's not what you meant) and leads to the old us/them divide.

I'd rather we all just got to enjoy the books we like to read

Can you imagine getting together to discuss your favorite escape stories in a weekly situation like this? Ten weeks of one-hour sessions to discuss _____________________?

Yes. Because I already have those conversations. They last longer than ten weeks as well!

 

[Extollager]

Kissmequick wrote,
------Quote:
Can you imagine getting together to discuss your favorite escape stories in a weekly situation like this? Ten weeks of one-hour sessions to discuss _____________________?
Yes. Because I already have those conversations. They last longer than ten weeks as well!------

What do you discuss? Surely there isn't inherent in the story much to discuss in an escape story.

To be sure, there may be much "around" the story to discuss, such as

--readers comparing notes about how old they were and under what circumstances they first read this story
--the author's life and times, including the history of the magazines for which the author wrote, etc.
--the author's opinions as expressed in his or her other writings, including essays, letters, etc.
--common attitudes, at the time the story was published, regarding women, or race, or religion, or politics, etc.
--other stories to read, if you liked this one, that have a kindred quality of suspense, fast action, weirdness, or whatever
--collecting this author's appearances in magazines, books, comics, etc.
--artists' interpretations of the story
--games, movies and/or TV based on this story or similar stories or ideas

Any of these topics might be fun to talk about. But none of these is a matter of the literary merits of the story. One could talk about any of these things for hours without particularly having to discuss the story itself. Take them all away and what are you left with to talk about, if the story at hand is an escape story?

Let me emphasize, what should have been evident already, that escape reading can be enjoyable. I'm not sneering at Connell's "Most Dangerous Game," which is kind of the classic escape story, or other examples. At times an escape story is just what a reader wants. But by definition it offers little or nothing but escape -- a daydream in print.

And I would contend that this is true of much science fiction and fantasy, including some of the most-cherished writing in these genres.

I'm not meddling with someone who willingly reads only escape fiction, but I will think he or she is probably missing much that fiction has to offer, analogous to my professional writer friend who (as I recall) mostly likes to eat just hot dogs.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I read for fun. Some is literary, most isn't. I have a degree in English/theatre, so I have read my share of literary, but mostly storytelling is king for me, not style. It's a choice, not something to espouse one way or the other and, frankly, not everyone wants high-brow, even when they appreciate the craft in it.

 

[SevenStars]

An analogy: escape fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to fast food: uncomplicated, predictable, easily enjoyed in solitude; "interpretive" fiction provides a pleasure equivalent to a really fine dinner: it mustn't be rushed; it provides uncommon satisfaction, and it's something you want to share with one or more other people.

Okay, I'm a critic / theorist / researcher and I absolutely agree with the comment regarding 'interpretive fiction'. It is certainly a joy to deconstruct, search for patterns and meaning and so forth - it's even more enjoyable when shared with like minds. I do, however, have to say that reading for pure enjoyment is every bit as important in my view. In the past before I gained my wings in theory and criticism I took part in many book clubs and discussions and positively thrived on them, like 'literary texts,' escape fiction can inspire debate and possibilities regardless of what genre it belongs to. For me, the reader is the most important person and whatever way they engage with a text and gain a positive experience is most worthwhile.

I have discovered that the slight downside to being a theorist is that one's mind tends to have a default mode that makes reading without deconstructing a near impossibility. It is a rare thing indeed to read purely for pleasure and make it to the last page without slipping into study and evaluation.

 

[Kissmequick]

Kissmequick wrote,
------Quote:
Can you imagine getting together to discuss your favorite escape stories in a weekly situation like this? Ten weeks of one-hour sessions to discuss _____________________?
Yes. Because I already have those conversations. They last longer than ten weeks as well!------

What do you discuss? Surely there isn't inherent in the story much to discuss in an escape story.

You don't think? Then why are there whole forums devoted to say Star Trek, discussing characters, plot arcs, the role of women in story, etc, even themes? A few thousand people deconstructing an episode of Dr Who and why this episode works better than that one? What do we think GRRM's master plan is? Who the heck IS Jon Snow's Dad? How does that tie in with what we think is the point of the story? What's better in a given war scenario, Millennium Falcon, the Liberator or a Klingon Bird of Prey? Seriously, there is TONS to discuss without any of the things you list (that list sounds a bit too dry for what I'd want to talk about - I don't think I've ever spent more than ten minutes discussing any of what you mention.).

All of these (ok not which spaceship is better) are a matter of the merits of the story - and that is what we talk about. At great length. Right here on these forums often enough. Just because a story is a popular escapist one doesn't mean there isn't scads to talk about.

ETA: FWIW I do actually enjoy certain lit fic works. I love the beauty of the prose, how it makes me feel. How it makes me escape from the here and now.

I'm not meddling with someone who willingly reads only escape fiction, but I will think he or she is probably missing much that fiction has to offer, analogous to my professional writer friend who (as I recall) mostly likes to eat just hot dogs.

Or perhaps they are enjoying fiction their way, not yours?

EETA: Analogy

My daughter sometimes play on my WOW account. She runs around collecting pets and thinking it's great when she gets a new bit of armour. She isn't playing it "properly", but she's enjoying it, her way, and she'd be bored rigid actually questing in any kind of earnest way, so what's the problem?

As long as peopel are A) reading fiction and B) talking about it, why does this even matter?

 

[Ursa major]

Different people derive different pleasures from reading the same book.

I think this leads us to the real answer, which is not placing something on a scale that runs between escapism and interpretation, and is not a matter of balancing "literary merit" with "entertainment value". True works of art offer all these things, and more, and allow as many people as possible to enjoy them to the extent they want to, and in many ways. Art has depth rather than a fixed place on a piece of string.

I really don't understand how this is missed and how we end up with pitiful, one-dimensional graphs. It seems like an attempt to pigeonhole novels in the same way we do, say, people when we badge them as "left" or "right" and ignore that nearly every person's viewpoint is much more complex than that.

I'm no literary critic, and so tend to fall back on music, particularly classical music. A complex piece of music can be enjoyed on many levels. Just because it may have tunes that anyone could whistle does not mean it has nothing else to offer below that surface (which is something that some people say unthinkingly about certain pieces, so music isn't that different to literature). On the other hand, something which has been created in the heat of great ambition, and eschews anything tuneful at all, can be as empty of true intellect as the prettiest birdsong.

To be fair, this breadth of ambition and achievement (or otherwise) is easier to see (see and hear) in music, because the techniques and various underlying forms are better known than seems to be the case with prose. But I still think it's a good way of assessing whether some prose is pleasurable in a multi-dimensional way and thus can be considered art.

Note, though, that if a novel (e.g. some grey shadow of a book clinically trying to be literary and failing even in that low ambition ) gives some people pleasure while failing to be art (as defined above), who really cares? I would only care if nothing else was being written. But it is.


My 2c

 

[Extollager]

I will ask people to read again my comment explaining how the escape / interpretation spectrum is largely a matter of the kind of reading a given work invites and rewards.

Escape fiction rewards casual, relaxed, even inattentive and rather passive reading. It gives us something pleasant to take our minds off our worries, boredom, etc. If we give escape fiction alert, attentive reading, problems often show up, such as, e.g. issues of implausibility, failure of elements to be integrated in a whole, slapdash construction, etc.

Interpretive fiction also gives pleasure, but it invites a more extensive and deeper activity of our awareness. Discussion returns us to the story itself. It has both life and inevitability. It odes difficult things well, e.g. Conrad's wonderful evocation of both scorn and compassion in The Secret Agent.

Let's keep the focus on the quality of reading that a work elicits. A first-rate literary work invites and rewards good reading. A work that offers nothing but escape during the period of perusal may be just fine for what it was intended to be. But "good reading" here is to some extent held in abeyance (assuming the reader is capable of good reading in the first place; many educated people may have been good readers, disinterested, responsive, alert, but become incapable of good reading...).

When I reread one of the Conan stories, I hold back the exercise of some elements of alertness and judgment. I'm apt to find myself remembering my enjoyment of the stories when I first read them around age 15. Fine, but that's not something I'm getting from the story itself. I think the nostalgia factor is a huge element in many people's enjoyment of escape fiction. I'm not saying that's reprehensible, but that it's something different from reading the story for itself.

 

[Ursa major]

This is what I meant about being one-dimensional: you seem to be associating failure of execution with works aimed at being escapist, and success in execution with works meant to be literary. Where does the successfully executed escapism fit on your line?

And where does the badly executed work of literary ambition fit? By being poorly written, it cannot be magically endowed with the attributes of escapism, can it? (Are Conan or James Bond wandering, unbidden, between its lines?)

 

[Kissmequick]

I think this leads us to the real answer, which is not placing something on a scale that runs between escapism and interpretation, and is not a matter of balancing "literary merit" with "entertainment value". True works of art offer all these things, and more, and allow as many people as possible to enjoy them to the extent they want to, and in many ways. Art has depth rather than a fixed place on a piece of string.

My bold - exactly - the most popular works appeal to all sorts of readers, with escapism on the surface and subtextual layers for those who like to delve.

Note, though, that if a novel (e.g. some grey shadow of a book clinically trying to be literary and failing even in that low ambition ) gives some people pleasure while failing to be art (as defined above), who really cares? I would only care if nothing else was being written. But it is.

Exactly! As long as there are lots of different styles available, so that each can find something they enjoy, there is no problem.

When I reread one of the Conan stories, I hold back the exercise of some elements of alertness and judgment. I'm apt to find myself remembering my enjoyment of the stories when I first read them around age 15. Fine, but that's not something I'm getting from the story itself. I think the nostalgia factor is a huge element in many people's enjoyment of escape fiction. I'm not saying that's reprehensible, but that it's something different from reading the story for itself.

That is what you feel when you read a Conan story

It is not what I feel*. So while you may think others only feel nostalgia when they read one, that is not, in fact, the case. And whose feelings are right? All of them. For the individual involved.

Most books of any merit (whichever one you want to use) elicit different things in different readers, and that is the whole beauty of it! That is what we all talk about!


* at least partly because I didn't read Conan at fifteen, and partly cos I don't remember when I did first read them....I take them for what they are. Even if I did remember, nostalgia is not what makes me like something. I like it because it did something to me. Oh er missus.

PS reading only escapist fiction is not like only eating hot dogs. It's as varied as food that isn't "posh", and more like only eating food you like so you don't throw up. Most delicacies started life as "what the poor people ate because they couldn't afford the real stuff". See chilli, bird's nest soup, pig trotters. Why would you only eat a shark fin, if you had the rest of the shark to eat? Would eat a snail if something better was available? Yet now, delicacies.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Let's keep the focus on the quality of reading that a work elicits. A first-rate literary work invites and rewards good reading. A work that offers nothing but escape during the period of perusal may be just fine for what it was intended to be. But "good reading" here is to some extent held in abeyance (assuming the reader is capable of good reading in the first place; many educated people may have been good readers, disinterested, responsive, alert, but become incapable of good reading...).

I have to disagree on one fundamental level: I find some works, claimed as first-rate literary, interminable to read. Jude the Obscure comes to mind, but there are many others I've read over the years and have set down thinking that they added little to my life outside of a tick in the I've read the book box. (I have, also, read many literary books that I love and treasure.)

To take eg Vorkosigan books, which I recall from earlier threads you did not like due to the writing not being tight enough/polished enough. I would argue that her characterisation is often much better than that in a book which is focused on its commas, and its structure, and its polish (which, for me, often kills the story) and, if that makes it escape-fiction, that's fine with me. Because I'd rather read about engaging characters doing interesting things than some misery who tries not to stand on worms and hurt them.

Call me a simple reader, perhaps (although I'm far from it and can stand my own in any books-related conversation in the bar) but books for me are about enjoyment, and that doesn't come from the polish of the prose, for me. It comes from the writer's ability to create a character I want to know better and a world I can become immersed in, and stuff the comma placement. (Within reason.)

 

[Montero]

I'm going to add Terry Pratchett's Discworld as an example of multi-layered books.

At one level it is a fantasy adventure, often comic, sometimes dark.

At another level it is a social commentary on our society past and present. At random - Vimes commenting on people being too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash and other remarks about having the pride to scrub your front door step and kitchen table - that you might have no food on the table but by god that table was clean.

There are also little throwaways in it which if you do not have a wide breadth of knowledge you can miss (e.g. Capability Brown and BS Johnson). A colleague once commented on Terry Pratchett, that his teenage son had said that he thought he didn't yet know enough to appreciate it fully. I find stuff I've missed before in TP books I've re-read several times, because I have now elsewhere in life, come across what it is he is referencing.

To me, the best books are multi-layered and don't take themselves too seriously though they may have serious points to make - they do not rub your nose in it, they are there as part of the story.

I'm with Springs on Vorkosigan saga - as well as all the top level fun and adventure, there is some very serious underlying commentary on how societies can run - look at the differences between Beta Colony, Barrayar, Komarr, Jackson's Whole and Cetaganda for example.


Questions for all those with a wide knowledge of historic and contemporary fiction:

1. Seems to me that the "big names" in literature, were in their day seen as popular writers. Is that correct? I am thinking Shakespeare, Austin, Dickens vs Hazletts Essays.

2. A lot of writers contemporary to the "big names" have not maintained popularity. e.g Marlow and Johnson, vs Shakespeare - is that correct? Any comments on why?

3. I have the impression, that there are some writers today, who are writing complex books almost for the sake of writing complex, obscure books - the literary equivalent of modern, non-representative art. Is that correct?

 

[Prospero]

Thank you for all of the thoughtful comments to my questions. While I would like to address them all, I will only choose two that seem most representative of the bunch of you. The first comments by Grunkens and by Extollager.

Grunkens, I respectfully disagree that all genre's are alike in this respect. Perhaps you could say more about what you mean by this. For example, the genre of 'Westerns' or 'Teen paranormal romance' generally lend themselves much less to interpretation than non-genre fiction. This is even while they might have some literary merit: by their very subject matter, they just don't offer themselves to the attention of those who would interpret it and would draw conclusions about the human condition.

Extollager, thank you very much for your thorough reply to this question. I very much like that you are looking to what the readers are doing when they read: escaping or interpreting. To me, that distinction is very clear cut and worthy of being placed on a binary scale. This indeed answers my question about why people read sf/f novels and the kinds of expectations that they have for sf/f literature: They read more often than not in order to escape, not in order to interpret.
It doesn't answer my separate question about the type of qualities that predominate, however. A work's having the quality of literary merit, as you recognised yourself, does not exclude the quality of entertainment value. They are two related but different questions. I should have been more clear: one question is about why readers read (which sort of literary qualities they take advantage of), and the other about which sort of literary qualities predominate in what is read.

 

[SevenStars]

I think this leads us to the real answer, which is not placing something on a scale that runs between escapism and interpretation, and is not a matter of balancing "literary merit" with "entertainment value". True works of art offer all these things, and more, and allow as many people as possible to enjoy them to the extent they want to, and in many ways. Art has depth rather than a fixed place on a piece of string.

Quite so. Literary evaluation is wonderful - necessary to further understanding, engrossing and enjoyable to engage in. But Art is more than this; it has universal appeal and, as we are all individuals, we will all have our own way of linking with it. What is most important is that people read and that they enjoy doing so!