[Veen]

Both you and the post I replied to seem to imply that fiction books without any deeper meaning cannot be good or great.

They can be good or great entertainment, but that's not what is generally meant when educated people say that a book is great literature. The artistic value of a book is almost independent of how entertaining it might be.

(I say "almost independent" because people who care about the "deeper meaning" get great pleasure from taking their time to discover it.)