The Beat Generation changed my perception of reading. It was shocking and fun and enough for me to read everything that Kerouac wrote. On the Road was the best. I wound up giving my collection to my niece. I also read the minor poets in the group as well as Allen Ginsberg.

Literature like history is selective. I think that there are great novels that will never make it beyond generations because no one took the time to popularize them. The advantage that the earlier writers have is that the reading population has doubled and doubled again making them much more popular than they were when they wrote their work.

I think it is a difficult to make a statement that Kerouac is crap. His first novel was a bit boring but so many novels out now are boring too. The bottom line is that the dude lived what he wrote, to make a literary point makes no sense because the writing itself was designed to be stream of consciousness, the intent was to create and as one created the work would stand alone without editing.

Does what he wanted to convey work? Yes it does. Because what the writer wanted to convey works and the literary style that was used is representational of the genre, Jack Kerouac will always be the literary iconoclast of the 50s early 60s.