I guess that how an author uses stereotypes and how far he stretches from them in character developing is really what builds the ladder from, if you want, lighter fiction to literature (academic approved), fairy-tale like to realistic (there is also unrealistic fantasy and realistic fantasy, the second one being represented by the magic realism), so on so forth. What the book does through language is to create a network of stereotypes which relate to each other in a way that gives and authentic sense of a certain situation or event, or state of life. Like, for example, when in "As I lay dying", Faulkner creates real visceral trauma and he pushes us hard in his twisted character's skin through a use of language that is totally unique, as he does also in "The sound and the fury". A different book may describe the same events but not go so deep into the character's inner structure because the focus of the author is a different one, or maybe the author was a "light" one and really didn't know how to build he wanted to.