So for a long time I avoided a lot of the literary masters. As a programmer, I thought they were way too artsy and "fluffy" for my tastes. I wanted something with hard science and boolean logic in it, dammit.
But around 40 I listened to the Learning Company's "Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition." It was like a guided tour of a huge amount of masterpieces. From this overview i could pick and choose what to consume. As I read each work, i had already been "prepped" by listening to a lecturer describe what made the work so outstanding.
So I picked up "Anna Karenina" Wow! Tolstoy could sketch a character like nobody else. I read some Dickinson. What a great, simple, yet complex way she had of describing inner emotional states!
Still couldn't get all of it. Joyce is on my list, but I procrastinate. I had another go at Melville and loved it, but I couldn't generate enough momentum to make it through Moby Dick. Both writing and reading styles have changed. I'd love to learn Greek and have a go at the true classical works, but I will never have the time, sadly.
I'm hoping to get another overview or introduction and then make a go at some of the rest of the material. I've loved reading the literary masters.
What I find is that you need a preparation or background to really absorb and appreciate the masters. This is the same as having to have a background in baseball to understand a baseball game. Otherwise, without context, it's very difficult to understand what parts work, what parts don't, and where the beauty is. (This is called a liberal education, by the way). The more broad and deep background you have, the more you can appreciate the masters in many fields.
Also I'd separate cargo cult liberal arts with actual understanding. To me there's tons of venues that exist to convince you that you're smarter than some other slob. They pitch quite a bit of snob appeal. I'd avoid that. You end up thinking you have class when all you're really doing is running around in a mob consuming whatever was on NPR last week. To me developing a sense of what the crowd thinks is beautiful versus truly coming to a personal grip with the masters is completely missing the point. I'm sure there's a social aspect to art consumption but to me a true master spans the test of time. While it's possible that something can be popular today and 100 years from now, for me using social proof as some form of merit for masterworks is almost diametrically opposed to the entire concept of what makes art truly great in the first place.
Fair warning, however: once you start consuming works from the masters it makes mediocre works hard to stomach. Oddly enough, bad material is fine. I still love me some pulp fiction and trashy pop music. It's the stuff that tries to be highbrow but you know is going to be gone with the wind in ten years that's impossible to take.