You should read it; check out the Anthony C. Yu's
revised translation. Yu's opening essay is really interesting; he talks about the historical monk who made the journey to India (hence, the West) in order to acquire Buddhist scriptures, about literary antecedents to the Qing novel, about allegorical elements within the story (how the story can be read as an allegory of internal enlightenment with regular references to traditional Chinese internal alchemy and characters who can function both as character and as allegorized representations of both Buddhist concepts and internal alchemy, and points out how the story consistently puts forward a particular syncretic perspective, the "three religions harmonious as one" tradition, including direct quotes and paraphrases of Lin Zhaoen.
Yu also had another interesting essay called "Two Literary Examples of Religious Pilgrimage: The Commedia and the Journey to the West"; I haven't been able to read the entire thing since the journal article is old and the library doesn't have it, though I have found most of it between Google Books and Amazon's preview. It's very interesting, and yes Journey to the West is as deeply steeped in Chinese religious perspectives as Dante's poem is in his Catholicism.
Also, you should read The Story of the Stone.
