Courtlandt Bryan

C. D. B. Bryan
Born	Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan April 22, 1936(1936-04-22) New York City, New York
Died	December 15, 2009(2009-12-15) (aged 73) Guilford, Connecticut
Nationality	United States
Education	Yale University, B.A., 1958
Occupation	writer
Employer	Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit, 598 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10022
Parents	Joseph Bryan III Katharine (Barnes) Bryan
Notes [1]

Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan (April 22, 1936 - December 15, 2009), better known as C. D. B. Bryan, was an American author and journalist.^[2]

Biography

A native of New York City, Bryan attended Berkshire School in the class of 1954 and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Yale University in 1958. His parents were Joseph Bryan, III and Katharine Barnes Bryan; after they divorced his mother married author John O'Hara.

He served in the U.S. Army in South Korea (1958–1960), but not happily. He was mobilized again (1961–1962) for the Berlin Crisis of 1961.^[1][3][4] He was an intelligence officer.^{[citation needed]}

He was editor of the satirical Monocle (magazine) (from 1961), Colorado State University writer-in-residence (winter 1967), visiting lecturer University of Iowa writers workshop (1967–1969), special editorial consultant at Yale (1970), visiting professor University of Wyoming (1975), adjunct professor Columbia University (1976), fiction director at the New York City Writers Community from (1977), lecturer in English University of Virginia (spring 1983), and Bard Center fellow Bard College (spring 1984).^[1][5]

His first novel won the Harper Prize (1965).^[3]

Bryan is best known for his non-fiction book Friendly Fire (1976). It began as an idea he sold to William Shawn for an article in The New Yorker, then grew into a series of articles, and then a book. It describes an Iowa farm family, Gene and Peg Mullen, and their reaction and change of heart after their son's accidental death by friendly fire in the Vietnam War.^[6][7] It was made into a 1979 television movie of the same name, for which he shared a Peabody Award. It's also been cited in professional military studies.^[8]

Bryan died from cancer on December 15, 2009 at his home in Guilford, Connecticut.^[9]

Partial bibliography

• So Much Unfairness of Things (short story; Literary Guild selection), Harper (New York City), 1965.
• The Great Dethriffe (novel), Dutton (New York City), 1970.
• Friendly Fire (nonfiction; Book-of-the-Month Club selected alternate), Putnam (New York City), 1976.
• The National Air and Space Museum (nonfiction; Book- of-the-Month Club selected alternate), art by David Larkin, photographs by Michael Freeman, Robert Golden, and Dennis Rolfe, Abrams (New York City), 1979, second edition with photographs by Jonathan Wallen, 1988.
• Beautiful Women; Ugly Scenes (novel; Literary Guild alternate), Doubleday (New York City), 1983.
• The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery, Abrams, 1987, 1997.
• (Author of introduction) In the Eye of Desert Storm: Photographers of the Gulf War, Abrams, 1991.
• Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T.; Alfred A. Knopf, 1995; ISBN 0-679-42975-1, 1996
• Also author of narration for the Swedish film The Face of War, 1963.
• Contributor to New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, Harper's, Esquire, Saturday Review, The New Yorker, and other periodicals.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, 2009. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC Fee via Fairfax County Public Library. Document Number: H1000013342 Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002. Entry Updated : 05/04/2001
2. ^ Obituary London Independent, March 25, 2010.
3. ^ ^{a b} "A Prize Case of Angst". Time. February 5, 1965. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839277,00.html. Retrieved 2009-04-01. "Novelist Bryan, John O'Hara's stepson, was educated at Yale, served in the Army during the peacetime occupation of Korea, and after his discharge was caught in the call-up of reservists during the 1961 Berlin crisis." 
4. ^ Wade, James (1967). One Man’s Korea. Seoul. p. 231. "In 1965, as South Korea entered its export-led take-off, C.D.B. Bryan wrote that “this is the foulest, goddamndest country I’ve ever seen!” The only thing that made Korea bearable, he thought, was “the availability of women”"  cited in Cumings, Bruce (May 2003). "Some Thoughts on the Korean-American Relationship". JPRI Occasional Paper No. 31. Japan Policy Research Institute at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. http://www.jpri.org/publications/occasionalpapers/op31.html. Retrieved 2009-04-01. 
5. ^ Steven Heller (March 3, 2007). "The Other Monocle, an article by Steven Heller". http://kostasvoyatzis.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/the-other-monocle-an-article-by-steven-heller/. Retrieved 2009-03-31. "Monocle was started while Navasky was still a student at Yale during the tail end of the McCarthy period. ... Their trenchantly witty writers included some of today’s literary and social comedic luminaries, Calvin Trillin, C. D. B. Bryan, Dan Wakefield, Neil Postman, Richard Lingeman, Dan Greenberg, and humorist Marvin Kitman" 
6. ^ Sheppard, R. Z. (April 19, 1976). "Prairie Protest". Time. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,914094,00.html. Retrieved 2009-03-31. 
7. ^ Applegate, Edd (1996). "C.D.B. Bryan". Literary journalism: a biographical dictionary of writers and editors (illustrated ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 35–36. ISBN 9780313299490. http://books.google.com/?id=dWQpXRudQPwC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=%2B%22c.d.b.+bryan%22+yale. Retrieved 2009-03-31. 
8. ^ Lt Col Charles R. Shrader, U.S. Army (December 1982). "Amicide: The Problem of Friendly Fire in War". Combat Studies Institute
   Research Survey No. 1 (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College). http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/shrader/shrader.asp. Retrieved 2009-03-31. "The other work takes the form of historical reportage in which a single case of artillery amicicide during the Vietnam conflict provides the occasion for a study of the reaction of one American family to the loss of their son in Vietnam. Although based on fact and containing a detailed reconstruction of an amicicide incident involving members of Company C, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, 198th Light Infantry Brigade (Americal Division), on February 18, 1970, C. D. B. Bryan's Friendly Fire focuses on the subsequent radicalization of Cpl. Michael E. Mullen's family, their involvement in the antiwar movement, and their inability to accept the fact of their son's death due to a friendly artillery round.5 Useful as an indication of the effect of amicicide on a victim's family, Bryan's book offers little in the way of general analysis of the problem of amicicide. ... As a result of C. D. B. Bryan's popular book, Friendly Fire, and the television drama based upon it, perhaps the best known incident of artillery amicicide in the Vietnam War is that which Bryan meticulously reconstructs and which serves as the initiating event for his story focusing on the tragic aftereffects of such an incident on one American family.56 On February 17, 1970, Company C, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, of the Americal Division's 198th Light Infantry Brigade, established a night defensive position on a wooded hilltop in the vicinity of Tu Chanh, South Vietnam. Because of priority missions the supporting artillery, consisting of four 105-mm howitzers located on another hilltop some distance away, did not begin registering Company C's defensive fires until the early morning hours of February 18. The defensive targets (or DTs) were correctly planned and plotted 400 meters from the company perimeter, or about 1,300 feet from the nearest soldier. The first registration round (WP--Airburst--50 meters) was right on target, but the second round (HE) exploded directly over the 1st Platoon area after striking a tree. Two men were killed (including Acting Sgt. Michael Mullens, one of the principals of Bryan's story) and six were wounded. Later investigation disclosed that the FDC of the supporting artillery unit had failed to calculate correctly for the height of the trees on the target hill. The first registration round (airburst) had cleared the trees, but the second (HE--Impact) had not. It hit a tree, exploded, and caused the friendly casualties.57 ... Infrequently, artillery amicicide incidents in Vietnam could be attributed to mechanical failure or defect in guns or ammunition. A few days before the main incident described in Bryan's Friendly Fire, the same artillery battalion had wounded several men in Company B, 1/6th Infantry (198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division) when using a howitzer with missing teeth in the elevating gear mechanism, the mechanism thus indicating a higher elevation than was actually on the tube.61" 
9. ^ Bruce Weber, C. Bryan, 73, ‘Friendly Fire’ Writer, Dies The New York Times. Retrieved on December 21, 2009.

• Connery, Thomas B., editor, Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1992.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 29, Gale (Detroit), 1984.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 185: American Literary Journalists, 1945–1995, First Series, Gale, 1997.
• Schroeder, Eric James, Vietnam, We've All Been There: Interviews with American Writers, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1992.
• Sims, Norman, editor, The Literary Journalists, Ballantine (New York City), 1984, p. 3.
• Atlantic, July, 1976; August, 1983.
• Atlantic Monthly, July, 1976, p. 93; August, 1983, pp. 96–98.
• Boston Herald, June 13, 1995.
• Chicago Tribune Book World, October 9, 1983.
• Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 1976.
• Commonweal, February 19, 1965, pp. 672–673.
• Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 28, 1983.
• National Review, April 20, 1971.
• New Republic, November 7, 1970.
• Newsweek, November 23, 1970; May 17, 1976.
• The New Yorker, July 31, 1995.
• New York Review of Books, April 8, 1965; August 5, 1976, pp. 41–43.
• New York Times, February 1, 1965; October 21, 1970; May 12, 1976; August 9, 1983.
• New York Times Book Review, January 31, 1965, p. 4; November 1, 1970, pp. 46–47; May 9, 1976, pp. 1–2; October 14, 1979; August 28, 1983, pp. 10, 15; June 11, 1995.
• Publishers Weekly, April 24, 1995.
• Saturday Review, February 6, 1965; January 22, 1972; May 15, 1976.
• Time magazine, February 5, 1965, pp. 112, 114; April 19, 1976.
• Times Literary Supplement, October 7, 1965; December 29, 1972, p. 1573.
• Washington Post, October 24, 1979; June 5, 1995.
• Washington Post Book World, December 27, 1970, p. 6; May 2, 1976, p. L5; August 21, 1983, p. 3.

Persondata
Name	Bryan, Courtlandt
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	April 22, 1936
Place of birth	New York City, New York
Date of death	December 15, 2009
Place of death	Guilford, Connecticut