On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Cycle 25 Reading Response 60-85

Sal finds his way to San Fransisco. He stays with his friend Remi Boncoeur and his girl, Lee Ann. They stay in Mill City, an voluntarily integrated neighborhood. He tries writing a screenplay, and Remi takes it down to Hollywood to show to a producer, but it doesn't get made into a movie. Remi gets Sal a job as a guard in the barracks, just to make enough money. To make ends meet, they steal from the kitchen of the barracks. They go to the racetrack, but Remi loses almost all his money. He borrows money to take his stepdad and his new wife out to dinner to impress them, but they see Ronald Major, whose drunkenness ruins the evening for everyone. Sal gets swept up in it and ruins the dinner, so Remi is furious and their friendship is ruined. He decides that the west isn't what he thought it would be and plans to head back out east to New York, but wants to go back through the south. He heads to L.A. and meets a Mexican girl, Terry. They sit together on the bus then sleep together.

treed: "...it was a canyon, and a deep one, treed profusely on all slopes." (p. 61) adj, resembling the branching structure of a tree
contingent: "The contingent shipped out..." (p. 69) noun, a group of people united by some common feature, forming part of a larger group
harangues: "The September rains came, and with them harangues." (p. 73) noun, a lengthy and aggressive speech
lugubrious: "Oh, it was sweet and delicious and worth my whole lugubrious voyage." (p. 84) adj, looking or sounding sad and dismal

Like Sal's other friends in On the Road, Jack Kerouac based Remi Boncoeur on a real person. Henri Cru first met Jack in prep school, then they later shared apartments in New York and California. By the episode in On the Road, they have been friends for quite a while, maybe 10 years. I think, just based on the way Sal and Remi interact and how Sal talks about Remi in the novel, that Remi is Sal's closest friend. He's different than the other people they know. Remi isn't trying to revolutionize the way Sal's other friends seem to. Remi is not trying to get away from his current situation with his mean girlfriend Lee Ann in a ramshackle neighborhood, as long as they make ends meet and don't fight too much. I know Remi wants more, but he doesn't make a noticeable effort. He tries to impress his stepfather, but does not succeed, at the fault of Sal. This is the thing that breaks their friendship. Sal was not thinking, but acting impulsively and immaturely. Maybe it was because Ronald Major was there and he felt that he needed to be someone different. We all find ourselves in this situation. We act one way around some people, and differently around others. We may do something with one group of friends because everyone else is doing it, and you do want to be the baby who's too afraid to do it, then complain about people who do things like that to another group of friends. Everyone does this. I think that this really hits Sal in this situation. Remi is his closest friend, but also his most under-appreciated. Remi is there when Sal needs a place to stay and a paying job in a strange city. Ronald Major is the friend who shows Sal a good time. Maybe it was his desperation finally catching up to him, or his inability to settle into something, but something made him mess things up and choose Ronald over Sal. Him drastically changing his actions just with the addition of another person wrecked things for the person he really cares about. I think this is part of his transformation, part of the process where he chooses which side he is on between his friends. I just hope that he deals with the fact that he acted in a way which probably permanently lost him a friend.