Is Literary Fiction a Genre?

Earlier this week I was at a publisher’s website and they said they published the best literary fiction available today.  I looked through some of their titles and a few did seem intriguing.  I then went to their submissions page to see what hoops an author had to jump through and I saw the line “we do not accept genre fiction.”  This got me to thinking about classifications and writing styles, subject matter and scope.  Surely we who read a great deal know exactly what they mean by genre, but how many genres are there?  These pigeon holes can range from the standard romance to science fiction, westerns to fantasy, detective to historical fiction.  But if we are using these terms as a classification device, then would not literary fiction also be a genre? more »