I know it's been almost two years since the comment was made but I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight unless I respond to the idea that "pulp fantasy" or pulp anything for that matter is unworthy by any standard against so called "classic" works. You take any novel written before 1900 that is still being read today and it was, in its own time, just as frivolous, just as unworthy. Anyone who gets really exposed to shakespeare generally learns to love his writing, but let's face it, he was writing the equivalent of "days of our lives" for his time. His audience wasn't the intellectual elite but the underclass.
Fiction for the masses is what has endured, precisely because it had broad appeal, and so beloved it was passed from generation to generation. The great classic literature 200 years from now will likely include names like Stephen King and Robert Heinlein. While many so-called "important" writers' names will be long forgotten.
As for me, I don't know how anyone chooses a single book as their favorite. Reading the many wonderful titles put forth I recognized several that were my "favorite". One thing is for sure, the same names came up over and over again, and I think our many greats grandchildren will recognize those names just as easily.