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From The Politically incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D., 2006.

Because Americans excel in short forms, you can take a high-speed tour through our whole literature by reading bite-sized pieces of fine American writing from Edgar Allan Poe to Flannery O'Connor. Poems: Read just four tiny ones: Emily Dickinson's "The Soul Selects Her Own Society" (only 12 lines), Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" (10 lines), Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (8 lines), and Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" (only 2!). Stories: Read Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Faulkner's "Barn Burning," Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River," and Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge." Finish your whirlwind introduction to the American canon with two short novels: Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby.