Literacy and junk literature

In response to a reasonable article on the subject in today's Guardian:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/23/enid-blyton-zoe-williams-comment?


I wrote:
Books like these are fantastic for getting kids to devour books. So is Harry Potter, and the quality of the ideas and the plot is light-years from Enid B, for which we should be much more grateful than we are. However...
1) Enid B has no intrinsic literary merit whatever, except for yarn-spinning more-ishness. So if weird old expressions become sleeping policemen on the highway of literacy - dump 'em. JKR and Mark Twain can take us over the bumps - they take us on a magic carpet ride - or at the very least have great suspension, Enid can't cos she doesn't, and hasn't.
2) Maybe readers aren't aware of just how fast and loose publishers play with an author's text. They wield the machete just as savagely as any drama producer, only like Mac the Knife their work is invisible. And they don't just do it after the event, they do it before publication too, and half the time they tell the hack what to write in the first place. If translators are traitors, then publishers are parricides or paedophiles (take your pick). So the whole industry is doing all this all the time, and they're about as good at self-regulation as the cops. So Enid is lucky she's still being read, and that the publishers go to the trouble of keeping her turkey twizzles devourable.
3) Junk food is a phenomenon of mass culture in a sick society. So is junk writing. Cure society and you get healthier mass culture.