I think this is the wrong way to look at the literary-commercial spectrum. I’ve always found it simplest to say that literary fiction calls attention to language, and commercial fiction avoids calling attention to language. It’s not about whether the writing is “good” but whether the writer wants you to wrestle with and linger over their prose, or whether they want it to go down easy.

Stephen King is somewhere in the middle, but I think it’s that go-down-easy quality that has people arguing against him being a literary writer. He’s choosing good adjectives, but he doesn’t necessarily want you to notice (consciously) that he’s doing it.