Kerouac is the greatest 20th century American writer. What say you ?

On the Road didn't age well tbqh. I get that it may have been really hip and fresh when it was released in the 50s, but to a modern mind it reads like the online travel blog of some annoying hipster dipshit.

>>9329249
not even close to being a contender.

>>9329249
i say read more

>>9329249
Going a bit too far but he was a talented writer. The issue is most just read the edited On the Road and base their entire opinion of Kerouac off of that.

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>>9329249
Hey OP i read Kerouac when i was about 20 and i loved it. I still respect Kerouac today and i hold the book dear to my heart. However i know alot of my adult friends who has reread the book and don't find it as fulfilling. Kerouac hit the nail on the head with the beat-generational burn, burn, burn, youth and exploring however it doesn't meet the delicacy of fragile inner emotional life, the absolute sadness and formal sophistication which one reads in more modern authors such as Elliot, Faulkner, Hemingbro, Delillo, Roth etc. I think you will find this to be true later. With all due respect, elderanon.

>>9329249
Literature isn't a competition.

>>9329249
I wouldn't say greatest, but he is highly highly underrated by people who assume that anyone could just sit down and start banging out prose like his.

>>9329254
People should read with context then.

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Not even the best American writer of the 20th century and atill pisses all over Keroucuck's chest.

Kerouac is great. I have no doubt of this. He combines a searing ability to bare his emotion (or create a literary character who does so, which is equally great), with a powerful scientific approach toward depicting the contents of consciousness (spontaneous prose), with a tremendous ability to write down the haunting beauty of America, its sadness and greatness, its hobo roadside gas stations and manic big cities.