Kerouac and Burroughs are objectively awful. I still think that Kerouac's popularity as a writer was an industry practical joke. Speaking of both skill and content. A People's History used to be an AP History book, so appropriate for very mature kids with teaching support but the books is in a different category. Assuming that the Mensa list is pretty much just an exposure of standard prep school English literature list to the masses, albeit uncurated so as to make it difficult to use. There's too much promotion of substance abuse in Thompson books to qualify them as appropriate for kids, even if the books are otherwise good. Usually high schools aren't in the business of radicalizing students with Chomsky as well as other very political books. Kids can pick that up in college and beyond.

In general, these books are categorically different. The provided list isn't missing them. They'd just be on a different list.

That last one you're trying to think of is Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

Infinite jest is a bad book. No, I will not read your fking calculus page alongside the other 1000+ pages of nonsense. The idea of assigning it even to mensa kids is exactly why Mensa has such a poor reputation. Mensa famously has the reputation of its members being extremely autistic. Books like this all but guarantee it if they are read by young, impressionable minds.

Ulysses is only good because Joyce was a coomer.

Candide is actually good and more people need to read it.

The others you listed are post modern neo Marxism or drug abusers which will teach your kids to hate your teacher and the whole idea of education. Why not just throw on “pedagogy of the oppressed” to put the final nail into the coffin of your kid giving a fk about what your teacher teaches (“sorry, I’m not doing your homework you colonizer shitlord, I refuse to participate in the banking model of education”.