All of these American writers were royally screwed, unfairly ignored, and dismissed by the Nobel Committee. Any intelligent person who loves great literature would recognize the towering genius of the following writers who should have received the Nobel Prize in Literature or been 2nd place runners-up

Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, John Dos Pasos, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, William Dean Howells, Louis Auchincloss, Walker Percy, J.D. Salinger, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, William Gaddis, John Barth, Sol Yurick, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, John Updike, Phillip Roth, William T. Vollman, and Richard Powers

It's a pity someone wouldn't rob you of your parochial sense of outrage.

Many great writers of many nationalities have been omitted from the pantheon of laureates. Consider the fact that European masters such as, amongst others, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, Joyce, Greene and Nabokov never made the trip to Stockholm, and you might get a little perspective on the matter.

Parochial my foot. I the Nobel Committee simply blew it. All of the writers you listed should have won as well.

There are so many great writers that it might be advisable for the Nobel Prize in Literature to be awarded in 3 writers per year.

British writers screwed and unfairly overlooked by the Nobel Committee - Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Anthony Powell, Kingsley Amis, and C.P. Snow

The Nobel foundation is bound the follow the rules set by Alfred Nobel. One of his specific rules was to award one single 'idealistical' writer every year, why for both those reasons, not every 'genius' can be taken into consideration for the price. The Nobel committee has a list of approximately 200 authors of excellent quality for consideration every year. To award them all would be absolutely impossible, least the rules would be changed to also allow posthumously given awards by posthumous committees. Hence, it's purely logical that a relatively large number of accomplished writers will never recive the award.