I always feel the need to explain the same thing. Kerouac wanted to be Proust. You have to read all his books to get the point of what he was doing, he was making his life a long story and each book is just a single chapter. If you just read OTR you'll leave before even the first act. At the very least you should compensate with Big Sur so you can see the begining of the end. I'd seriously recommend trying to read as much as you can in order if you want to apreciate the point of his writing.
On the other hand Burroughs wasn't a man who loved writing like Kerouac. Junky has first "edited" by Jack, and by that I mean he gathered the pieces of paper that were laying around while Burroughs tried to absorve orgon or whatever and kept insisting that he should publish it.
The beats in general are a mixed bag. I like what they were doing with poetry in the begining but it quickly went to shit and generated a million crap copycats. If you can take your mind away from all the stereotypes, and you enjoy poetry, you might like some of the earlier stuff. They were pretty well read people and it was more common to just read classic poetry than their own stuff, they also pushed programs to teach writing in jails and promoting reading and writing in general. Eventually teens failed to get the core and kept replicating the more banal aspects that no one should care enough, and that made them an easy target for mass media to turn into the same kind of scapegoat "millenials" are right now.
>>7280403Burroughs had already two or three novels and recognition by the time the term "beat" started to catch up. I wouldn't really include him as more than a godfather
