He honored them by telling their stories. But in order to tell their stories with energy and accuracy he found that he had to invent a new prose style. This style, which cost him considerable time, energy, and pain to develop and sustain, he called "spontaneous prose," and by means of it he became known later as the spokesman or "father" of the Beat Generation.
Kerouac's literary reputation was sacrificed to this role of spokesman. The Beat Generation was quickly condemned as a gang of subversives, deviants, and juvenile delinquents, a dubious sociological and political judgment that made any responsible assessment of Kerouac's accomplishment as a writer impossible. Kerouac himself was unable to defend his work against the critics' hostility. So desperate was he to escape the suspicion and derision of critics that he repudiated the term beat which he himself had brought into common use. His desperation merely added fuel to the critics' scorn, and his alcoholism, from which he died at the relatively early age of forty-seven, may have been felt as a just retribution. Not even death itself could inspire a reversal of critics' attitudes. Though many of his books are still in print and read avidly, his literary reputation remains clouded.
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