I think it is sad that there is this assumption that if a book is popular it cannot be "good" literature and if lots of people like a painting it cannot be good art.
However being popular doesn't make it good either. I think it is true that the arts establishment dislike things that cannot be categorised and refusal to follow fashion - theirs is a closed secret society and they like it that way. It is an attitude that I think was typified by an Opera review in the Grauniad about 10 years ago "only the quality of the tenor raised this production above mere entertainment". This stuck in my memory because I had seen the same production a few months earlier in Paris. It had been my first experience of Opera
and I had been sceptical and had thought it wouldn't be my thing - but a musician friend had a ticket that would go to waste .. so I went and was hooked by this straightforward production. I still go to the Opera when I can - but I never buy the Guardian so angry was I made by its patronising and sneering reviewer.
After being raised that it showed lack of character to fail to finish a novel, my life is now busy enough that I no longer feel guilty if I fail to do so - I feel life is too short to read poorly written books which I don't enjoy (and that I am capable of making that judgement).
There are a lot of weak books out there "disposable " fiction that I throw into my shopping trolley and out into the next charity bag, but there are also some very good writers who just don't happen to write "high brow fiction" . These I tend to buy on sight knowing that I will have a few enjoyable hours, in the same way as I know I am giong to enjoy the food at a favourite restaurant. In this category, I place writers such as Maeve Binchy and Isobel Wolff (chick lit maybe but intelligent chick lit!!!).
On the other hand there are contemporary, "high brow" writers who I find very readable Milan Kundera, Ian McEwan, Margaret Attwood.... others well not....
But I feel that Tolkien, Pratchett, Pullman et all, suffer, and are particularly victimised by the "cognoscenti" (to give them a suitably pretentious title) is becasue they cannot be dismissed out of hand. They ignore the middlebrow stuff -because it doesn't intrude on their world but you cannot dismiss these so easily. There is originality, intelligence and a great deal of knowledge and you cannot say that these writers are not holding a mirror up to the world. Tolkien does so by creating a world; Pratchett for all the jokes is deeply political; Pullman is so dark, but has profound things to say to those who choose to listen.
But yet these writers are bought, loved and adored by many who do not care a jot about the Booker and may or may not probe the deeper levels AND by many of us who also read Booker type books. Therefore the "cognoscenti", will never accept them. They cannot admit to liking them because they are popular and readable but they cannot dismiss them because they are not froth, and there are too many of us who read and love them who have qualifications in literature that are as good as theirs!
While they have their flaws as writers, so do many who occupy unassailable places in the canon. Yes, I think LOTR has weaknesses in structure particularly, but they are nothing to those in "Our Mutual Friend". .....
I realise now I could have said all this is one word - Snobbery
I really want to know which one of those three Fordim thinks is awful - I rather like the two I have read so I rather hope it is the third ... else it will be pistols at dawn again....