As you've chosen both to announce that you're "cursed" with a lit degree and to claim that Kerouac,

Are that literal minded that you think I actually believe I'm cursed to have a literature degree? You should pause and consider your words before you start to huff and puff.

who, unlike you, wrote a book that inspired an entire generation and continues to be read with joy a half-century later, was an illiterate hack,

You're dipping into the moat of cliches , friend, and stating that he "inspired an entire generation" is a weak defense as a writer. An "entire generation" is redundant as well;"generation" by itself would have sufficed. Also,you should read closer, since I didn't say JK was an "illiterate hack" . I said he was a bad writer. Bad writers are often famously read, and this is the case with Kerouac.

I'm compelled to note that:

1) it's "overrated" or "over-rated," but never "over rated"

Pointing out typos on a public bulletin bulletin board as proof that my grammatical chops are suspect is sweating the small stuff. You'd have cause to complain if I wrote wasn't clear, but that's not the case. You understood what was meant.

2) the "argot" wasn't "dated" when it was written, but rather entirely au courant, and, anyway, as all hip slang is by definition ephemeral, that's rather a non-point

But it's dated now, and it's skewed expressiveness has not travelled well beyond its time. The matter wasn't the use of hip slang, but with the slap dash quality of his prose, which was, save for a bright passage here and there, chatty and plain as words can be.

3) the cliche which I think you meant to employ is "vested interest," not "invested interest," and 4) it should be "secondary sources about him," not "he." (surely you learned in 5th grade that only objective case pronouns can be prepositional objects, no?)

That is supposed to mean something in your defense of Kerouac? Weak ,my friend.

You're pretentious, dude. But more important, you're wrong.
I'll own up to being occasionally pretentious, but wrong about Kerouac? Spot on, my brother, spot on.