@Darielle I certainly didn't realize the Hardy Boys were still popular. Still, popularity may be sustainable for a long time, but art tends to stay popular over at least a couple hundred years. It's interesting to note in the "is it art or just pulp fiction?" question, that on one side it is the intelligentsia who "snobbisly" say what is art and what is not, while the "masses" just keep buying what they like and, eventually, that too, becomes art. Sci-fi is certainly in this category as are horror stories like Dr. Frankenstein (by Mary Shelly the wife of the more well known romantic poet Percy Byssje Shelley and friend to the equally known other Romantic poet Lord Byron). The professional critics, though, often put some kind of approval on a work and it becomes "art" long after it has faded in popularity. Williams Shakespeare -- you may have heard of him -- was relegated to the dust heap of forgotten authors until Alexander Pope in the late 1700 started bringing him to light. Due mainly to Pope's enthusiasm other critics picked up the dusty volumes of Shakespeare and, as they say, the rest is history. In fact, many very famous authors have followed the sad path of being poor starving artists all their lives, dying poor, and finding lasting acclaim when it was too late to enjoy it or the fruits of it.
As for Tolkien being laborious, that it true. But Dickens in the first half of any of his works is also difficult -- then he takes off and the plot comes rushing in to carry you off into that wonderful place of character and imagination that makes him worth reading. You just have to slog through the first few hundred pages saying to yourself, "I believe this will get better, I believe...." And Falkner and Joyce take a lot of "getting used" to as well.
It's interesting but the best selling book of all time and one that tops every list every year and has done so long before the New York Times started tracking the price of eggs in colonial New York, is the Bible. The King James Bible, 1609 edition, is still in print and still outsells most other books -- and if you combine it with the thousands of other translations and paraphrases, annotated versions, study versions, etc....etc...etc., you have a very, very "popular" work. However, is it art? Certainly some parts of the KJV are exactly because the translators intended it to be so. They actually, consciously determined it should be translated with "art" or "poetry" in mind and thus, in more than a few places, the reading is not quite the orginal, though anyone interested can find this out easily. But some parts, even in the original, can hardly be considered "artistic," let alone "poetic." And as for influence of the Western culture, Northrup Frye, a Marxist Critic teaching at Harvard in the 1960's and 1970's was said to have asked on the first day of his freshman Western literature classes, "How many of you have read the New Testament?" Then, after getting a show of hands, added, "Those of you who have not need to go home this weekend and read it. You can't understand Western Literature if you haven't." In the end though it's popular, it's been around forever (some would stay, literally) and it contains passages of sublime art. But it's, overall, a rather rough and tumble affair in which you get a whole lot of variance and an even more difficult time figuring out what it all means. And, as the source of "wars and rumors of wars" both figurative and real, it is also controversial. And seldom, compared to it's popularity, read. One cannot imagine plunking down $30 for a J.K. Rowling book and NOT reading it, but most people receive $30 Bibles and use them to measure the dust that has fallen in the room between now and the last dusting. Sometimes in inches!
Well, enough of this missive. Keep up the good reading and we'll sort it out in the end, right? LOL.
AJ
Corrections: Northrop Frye was NOT at Harvard in the 1960's and 1970's but was in 1976 only as a visiting guest lecturer. He was at, Victoria College, Toronto most of his career. And while he was considered a Marxist he was also an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada. Sorry for counting on my memory. AJ