Salon article: Breaking up with the Beats

"Breaking up with the Beats" is a killer piece from Salon in 1999. In it, author David Gates is fairly critical of the beats, and yet he states:

Dean Moriarty, the pseudonymized Neal Cassady of "On the Road," is one of American literature's great characters.

I appreciate Gates' criticisms, yet they pale in comparison to Kerouac's achievements. Who do we have today of Kerouac's stature? What living author has created one of American literature's great characters? What living author is identified as the defining voice of a generation?

Don't tell me it's a different time, there's the Internet, Jack's competition wasn't like it would be now, blah-blee-blah. Deal with what is! Jack did. And Jack's work will stand the test of time.

Period.