Life doesn't have any structure. It doesn't have any narrative arc. And Kerouac blows away all that rigid contrivance with one brilliant explosion of language.

Life, actually , does have structure, in the communities we create and the institutions we formulate to hold them together,and in the culture that is shared that provides a diverse citizenry with a sense that there is a purpose to where and the way we live, and that there are the means to improve, correct, or change the conditions of our lives. This is structure. While life has no narrative arc, per se, literature certainly does, and it is in the art of that narrative that the contingencies of life, all those things that one cannot predict (let alone prevent from happening) are contained in fictive form and which can be appreciated as drama, comedy, moral instruction, what have you. Literature is a means to make sense of life, to provide resolutions to brief joys and large traumas, and it is a way to prepare a reader for what ever strange turn one's life might come to.

Since I've read On the Road, novels with plots, and conflicts and resolutions, and so on, all seem hopelessly mechanical and false.

Tossing out plots, conflicts, structure is no less a gimmick, I think. It's more interesting to see how writers reconfigure and plotting techniques to tell their truths in compelling ways.

Some of these are pretty commercial though: Mailer, Cheever, Updike, Styron. These are middle-brow hacks, and thank God there's an avant garde alternative to them (Kerouac!).

Kerouac is quaint and nostalgic, and it's his image that's been sold to new audiences, not literary merit. Mailer has had best sellers, sure, but he's been a bold innovator of narrative form in Why Are We In Viet Nam, Of Women and their Elegance, Ancient Evenings and his most recent The Castle in the Forest . He's hardly one catering to a large audience's expectations by sticking with a style they are familiar with and expect. Updike is similarily experimental with form, as in Brazil, The Centaur, Terrorist, and his Rabbit Quartet. Kerouac's limitless capacity for self-regard comes up short with what these writers have accomplished.