Why Does Lit Got To Be So Sad?

Over at The Bright One, Marianne Goss (a Joliet native!) writes of her struggles to find literary fiction that isn't all gloom and doom.

Why is it that someone who presumably loves to read fiction has been having trouble finding novels she wants to read?

Could it be because literary fiction--the term used to distinguish serious fiction from the commercial variety--is often grim? Consider, for instance, the overriding element in some selections of my book group: Suicide in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road. A lonely death in Balzac's Pere Goriot. Cynicism in Voltaire's Candide and Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts. Brutality in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Perversion in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Bleak satire in Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. Alienation in Albert Camus' The Stranger. Even a novel by Barbara Pym--an author who was my suggestion and whose novels are considered high comedies--left me feeling sad about the underlying loneliness of her characters.

"Literary fiction," says a Web site I came across as I was searching for some possibly upbeat titles, "rarely has a happy ending." When did this become literary dogma?

So, how about it, gentle readers? Any suggestions of uplifting literary fiction? If I get enough good suggestions, perhaps I'll gather them up and forward them to Ms. Goss.