The Boo
Authors: Pat Conroy
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #United States, #Literary, #Military, #History
The Boo
DEDICATION
THE SOUTH CAROLINA CORPS OF CADETS
C
HARLESTON
, S. C.
S
UBJECT
: Dedication of the 1964 S
PHINX
To: LT. COLONEL THOMAS NUGENT COURVOISIE
To select one individual who best represents our theme is the job of the 1964
SPHINX
Staff. With great pride and satisfaction we announce our decision to dedicate this 1964
SPHINX
to LT. COLONEL THOMAS NUGENT COURVOISIE.
A native of Savannah, Georgia, Thomas Courvoisie entered The Citadel in September, 1934. After three years, he was honorably discharged, returning in 1950 as a veteran student and graduating a member of the Class of 1952.
After his graduation, Lt. Colonel Courvoisie taught at various posts throughout his army career, joining The Citadel faculty as associate Professor of Military Science in 1959. While at The Citadel, he voluntarily accepted duties as the faculty leader in a number of cadet activities. In 1961, he was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service.
Appointed to the post of Assistant Commandant of Cadets upon his retirement from active Army service in 1961, Lt. Colonel Courvoisie has the distinction of being a favorite of the Corps while representing the authority which must enforce its discipline. Let the 1964
SPHINX
stand as a tribute to one “Citadel Man” whose career serves as a pattern for others to emulate.
Reprint from the 1964
Sphinx.
The Boo
By
Pat Conroy
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated with love
To
Elizabeth Courvoisie
Whom the cadets called “Mrs. Boo.”
PREFACE
The Boo
gave me only two guidelines when I approached him about this book. “It has to be a fun book, Bubba, and it can’t hurt The Citadel in any way.” With these two dictums in the back of my mind, I wrote the book, making it as humorous as possible, and making it an honest reflection of the spirit of The Citadel. The book, in essence, is the love affair of Courvoisie for the cadets and his school. The stories within this book were not written maliciously or callously; they were written to show an inside view of the long gray line, an intimate view not often afforded to the general public. The Citadel is quirky, eccentric, and unforgettable.
The Boo
and I collaborated on this book to celebrate a school we both love — each in our different ways. Proceeds for the book will go to a gift fund honoring Citadel graduates killed in Viet-Nam.
Most of the names in the book have been changed for legal and personal reasons.
Thanks to the following people for their help and encouragement. My wife, Barbara. My daughters, Jessica and Melissa. Elizabeth Courvoisie. John Doyle. Bernie Schein. Tim Belk. Richie Matta. Connie and Larry Rowland. Bill Dufford. Gene Norris. Millen Ellis. Freddie and Lindsay Trask. Bob Marks. Berry Murray. Herbert and Harriet Keyserling. Billy Keyserling. Steve Grubb. John Bowditch. John Warley. Dr. Henry Rittenberg. Bill Warner. Peggy Runnels. Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Randel. Special thanks to “Tut” and Ellen Harper for their encouragement and love from 1963-1967. And to the many cadets who provided these stories.
CONTENTS
Introduction to the Second Edition of
The Boo
The Boo
was the first book I ever tried to write, my maiden voyage on the high seas of English prose, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. It is a book without a single strength except for the passionate impulse which led me to write it in the first place. When I open its pages, I can smell the callow idealism and iridescent earnestness of the boy I once was. At times, I open the pages of
The Boo
to reacquaint myself with the kid and see if we could get along today. I think we could, but I’m not sure the boy would be so fond of the man he would become. What an extraordinary arc of difference, fierce as any law of physics, a decade makes. The boy who wrote
The Boo
in 1969 would write
The Lords of Discipline
in 1979. The angle of configuration changed radically and for the time in these ten years. I could not write
The Boo
today no matter how ardently I tried to create the conditions of those sweet incorruptible days when I lived in Beaufort, South Carolina, taught some wonderful kids on Daufuskie Island, was deeply in love with my wife, and thought I would be happy forever. I had not learned how to write then and had not even tried. I had no intimation that my writing and my nature were such inseparable communicants. I only knew that I wrote the language with more facility than other cadets at The Citadel which infused me with no surfeit of confidence over my gift. In the barracks, a proven inability to function in the English language was unassailable proof of virility. Awkwardness with the written word was as natural to Citadel cadets as speed among impalas.
Writing
The Boo
proved one inexorable truth to me: I did not know how to write. That lesson has been of tremendous value, and I’ve always been grateful that my first book was so modest and naive. It put no pressure on me to match my original effort. It simply told me with its modest voice that I had a long way to go and I would have to work as hard as any writer alive if I was going to say the things I felt in the heart’s most private self.
The Boo
was the beginning of my education as a writer. I wrote the book in torrid stretches, on weekends and late at night, in white heats of the spirit, in sprints and dashes of a fevered, coltish soul. It never occurred to me that anyone would actually read what I had written, especially with an observant and critical eye. At that time, I had set out to be a poet and I took the proper time laboring over those undistinguished and emotionally torrential poems of my early twenties. It was a happy day for the language when I abandoned the craft of poetry forever. But it would take years to learn that prose required the same intensity and commitment of the spirit. In 1969, prose was something I dashed off quickly; prose, all my prose, was a letter to the world telling what happened to me last summer.
The Boo
was my longest letter to the world; it was also my angriest.
The Boo
is
The Lords of Discipline
in embryo. I wrote it because I went back to The Citadel for homecoming five months after my own graduation. I had gone to visit and pay homage to Colonel John Robert Doyle, my faculty advisor and favorite teacher. When I was returning to my car, I spotted Lt. Colonel Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, nicknamed The Boo by the cadets, coming out the back door of his quarters. I had not been close to The Boo at The Citadel, but I had been close enough to know that a sense of both humor and justice was an extraordinarily rare combination to be found in a figure of authority in a military environment. I waved at him and walked over to say hello, walked toward my apprenticeship as a writer, walked toward the history of this book. Unconsciously I saluted him as I made the approach. It is hard to forsake the habits of a cadet in only five months (though my attempts were heroic). We talked with that combination of familiarity and gravity so common among recent graduates and their superiors. Then I asked a question which would change both of our lives. I do not know what my life or The Boo’s would be like today if I had failed to ask this question.