There are a few books whose everlasting fame eludes me. "On the Road" and "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye" all provided mystifying reads...because they are supposed to be great and manifestly are not.
This is true of a lot of things, though. Take Shakespeare's comedies. They aren't funny. A modern Shakespeare audience laughs at the jokes even though they already see them coming (having read the play multiple times already). This is the opposite of normal experience. I won't laugh much at a genuinely funny comedy if I've already seen it 10 times, so why would I laugh at 500-year-old puns that I've heard before...when even the best puns rarely cause laughter the first time?
And concerning "getting published and selling today" - Sarah Palin gets published. That doesn't mean that what she writes is anything other than trash.
I've seen the film Animal House[0] about 20 times and still think it's funny. Part of the humor is the set-up and delivery. Yes, I know John Belushi is going to force potatoes out of his mouth, but when it happens it's still funny because of all the little details.
Same for A Night at the Opera. Dated in some ways, but hysterical in others. Grouch Marx is just funny, even when you know the jokes.
Now, my wife wonders how I can watch the same movie twice, since I what happens and how it ends.
My brother, though, compares this to listening to music; you know the words and how the melody goes, but you still like listening to a familiar song. Some people are that way with books and plays and movies, too.
[0] Yes, I am that old.
The style worked for me (even though I'm decidedly not from the era of its original readers) because even though the vernacular is dated, it was still relevant to the mannerisms I spoke with in my teens and (maybe) early twenties.
Reading it again now, in my thirties, it is dramatically different. Not because I've read other books that imitated the style, or because it has become cliche, but because I am very far removed, mentally, from how I was when I first read it.
I enjoyed "The Great Gatsby" as a story, but it didn't connect with me in the way it seems to connect with others. However, I suspect that read in a different moment of my life its impact could be profoundly different.
I've heard that it's a generational thing. Times were supposedly different when it was first written. As for me, I didn't get it.
I liked "The Great Gatsby" though.
I doubt I can articulate why I liked it, though - neither the plot nor the characters were about "likability", and I can't say I walked away with any profound life lessons. It was unique among books I've read in that I put it down at the end and thought "Wow, that was something... but I'm not sure what."