Look, this highbrow distaste for plot produces a never-ending series of novels that: A. Don't live up to the authors' literary aspirations, and B. No one wants to read. Sure, you can legitimately criticize Dan Brown's writing. But I choose to criticize the lack of plot in modern literature.
The lesson here is that great writing is a distant second to having a great story to tell.
And, let's take it a step further: Writing is a teachable skill. There are creative writing classes on every college campus. They may not make you a great writer, but they certainly inculcate an academic sense of what is great writing.
Personally, I'm not at all convinced this is a good thing. These classes surely cannot give you an imagination. The best writer I know, by far, has a comfort with the English language which I envy, but more important, she has a story to tell. Truly great writers always have a story to tell. Pretenders wax lyrically about the wallpaper. And endlessly develop psychologically complex characters who never get around to doing too much.
Bottom line: Having something to say is infinitely more important than how you say it.