Howl set off similar kinds of debates in the 1950s. Trilling changed his mind, and in his monumental anthology of world literature, he included me with Shakespeare and Sophocles. I don't read him. Everybody's a would-be canon maker. He just advertises himself as a canon maker but he doesn't make the canon.
Readers make the canon.
And much of that has changed. As of this last year, Kerouac is becoming more recognized as a monumental writer of the late-20th century who knew what he was doing, better than Truman Capote in terms of writing. There have been several reviews that point out Kerouac accomplished a work with vast scope, as distinct from the Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, middlebrow view that he had one interesting book, On The Road, and the rest was not readable. But among poets, Kerouac is known to be a seminal influence not only on me but on Bob Dylan as well Gary Snyder and Robert Creely. It's obvious that Kerouac and Ma Rainey and Robert Johnson will be in anthologies sooner or later.