Ultimate judging contest; or, fanguys vs. 'the best that has been thought and said"

[Mark Kohut]

Here's one question, perhaps, that can be asked about we p-listers re
the 'fan club' question raised by the oft-maligned MalignD:

Clive James in his book about ALL/Most of the important writers we should know, which title I am away from, can't recall and won't look up asks: 

Isn't it true that we [common readers/academics/canon-definers] overrate
many 'difficult' books just because we feel virtuous in reading and [somewhat, at least] 'getting them"? I believe he gives Milton or The Faerie Queen as his canonical candidates.

[I confess: that question skews my confidence in judging/rating TRP vs. many other writers (and I ain't read a significant fraction of 'most')]. To bring up a praised MalignD example, a writer he, and others, think should win that BIG ONE, Alice Munro. I like her immensely---and read  her stories as breaks when reading AtD and in my last round of rereading Pynchon. 

One [I] cannot imagine anything like the attempted "figuring out' we do here on the p-list, when we are ending various jazz-like improvs and coming back to the baseline. She is so straightforward, so simply human on the page, I want to say. [I can imagine discussion of her artistry, story by story; I can imagine psychologists and knowers of Canadian history and literature being brought in to show her "insights"
and influences, but  

She is not Pynchon nor was meant to be. She might be "better" than he is
all in all, I'll never know, but he is not her nor was meant to be.

That's it.