That comment was based on CS Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism-- the argument is that any fiction which attracts devoted rereading has something going for it, and it's better to evaluate fiction by the sort of reading it gets rather than evaluating readers by whether they like the right fiction.

This was published in 1961-- I think the idea of dethroning official lists of Great Books was more revolutionary then.

See also his High and Low Brows, which argues that the only reliable difference between high and low status art is that high status art is more difficult to appreciate, with the clinching argument being the likes of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Mozart becoming high status as they become less accessible.

He further argues that both high and low status art have good and bad features and should be evaluated by the same standards.