It's still fashionable to put down Kerouac. This guy is still on the forefront. The authors you read are just too chickenshit to cite him as an influence.
I don't know, I just found he was full of pretentious "it sounds like it might be deep" horseshit. Every once in a while there was a really brilliant line or two.
I preferred early Ginsberg, pretty much all of Ferlinghetti (except maybe Her), and the books of Bill Burroughs. All of them are ranked much higher than Kerouac for me.
Brother Antoninus was awesome too.