One of the changes that I have seen is that many of the pieces of great literature of the past had their share of action and conflict. The modern great novel is not great but simply intellectual musings set to paper. Boring as all get out.
Modern Great Literature = chic lit. Usually involves chamomille tea and internal doubts and questions.
Junk literature = guy literature. Usually involves “Arkon the Gratiutously Cruel” and some big bombs...in other words, real conflict.
I’ll take the latter and leave the former to the remainder bin.
Bombs, cruelty, conflict . . . sounds like Ernest Hemingway or Ian Fleming, neither of which I'd put in the "junk literature" category. Heck, even Life of Pi is a shipwreck story with some rather graphic animal-on-animal violence. I'd hardly put it on the chamomile-and-lesbians stack, either.
I think there's a lot more muscular literary fiction out there than you give credit for. The reason we tend to hear more about the effeminate stuff is, I suspect, thanks to the influence of Oprah and similar media mavens.
Here in Canada, the CBC runs an annual competition called "Canada Reads," in which well-known Canadian personalities defend a Canadian novel they think everyone should read. Sure, there's a fair share of feminist sludge, but two notable winners in the mid-2000s were Rockbound by Frank Parker Day, and The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe. The former is a 1928 novel about a feud between two fishing families living a harsh life on a remote Nova Scotia island; the latter is a turn-of-the century Western/survival story. (It begins with a man stuffing himself into the warm carcass of a dead horse to keep warm during a blizzard—as far as I'm concerned, anyone who cribs from The Empire Strikes Back for a period Western will get my vote too.)
I think there's a lot more meaty literature out there than much of this thread gives credit for.