I read it in my Lit of the American West class and had a mixed group of students -- half who utterly idolized Kerouac and half who just didn't find much good to say about him. I found his style grating and the "characters" completely beyond my range of sympathy. So, since I could neither identify with the heroes nor the plot (which I found tedious at best), I came down on Truman Capote's side of things: "That's not writing, that's typing."