What's American Fiction Without the Short Story?

This week, The Atlantic published a new list of “The Great American Novels.” It’s full of both expected classics as well as both good and/or weird surprises. There is no way to do these lists without the former and no point in doing them without the latter. Overall, I think The Atlantic did a fine job. I appreciated the inclusion of graphic novels (Sabrina and Watchmen) and especially the genre books. Certainly novels like Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Butler’s Kindred, and Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House deserve spots. What’s American literature without science fiction, horror, and hardboiled detective fiction? Excluding them would be like excluding Westerns and rom coms from a list of Great American Movies.