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Is it not possible to write about Jack Kerouac's 50-year-old masterpiece without childishly aping the author's style?

It's also not necessary to emulate a writer's style when discussing the writer's work, yet critics writing about On The Road invariably try to reproduce the sense of childlike wonder that infuses the book. Yes, God is Pooh Bear, but inferior writers don't realize that you can't just toss phrases like that into your own essays and get away with it. Even Kerouac wouldn't have dared slipping in that line until the very last page of On The Road, after he had earned it with everything that went before. Kerouac made Beat writing look easy, but it never was and it's still not.

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I read On the Road and Catcher in the Rye at 13. It ruined me. I already have the 50th anniversary edition of the book on my Christmas list, but no way in hell will I read it again as long as I am writing my stories. I tend to not read much of anything when I am writing. The styles and flow creep in too easily sometimes.