C. D. B. Bryan

Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan (April 22, 1936 – December 15, 2009), better known as C. D. B. Bryan, was an American author and journalist.[1][2]

C. D. B. Bryan
Born	Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan April 22, 1936 New York City
Died	December 15, 2009 (aged 73) Guilford, Connecticut
Education	Yale University, B.A., 1958 Berkshire School
Occupation	writer, editor, professor
Employer	Monocle (Editor-in-Chief, 1961–65) The New Yorker Lynn Nesbit at Janklow & Nesbit Literary Agency
Known for	Friendly Fire (film) (1979) Friendly Fire (1976) P. S. Wilkinson (1965) So Much Unfairness of Things (1965)
Parent(s)	Joseph Bryan III Katharine (Barnes) Bryan John O'Hara (stepfather)
Awards	Harper Prize (1965) Peabody Award (1980)

Biography

He was born on April 22, 1936 in Manhattan, New York City. Bryan attended Berkshire School in the class of 1954 and earned a Bachelor of Arts at Yale University in 1958, where he wrote for campus humor magazine The Yale Record.[3] His parents were Joseph Bryan III and Katharine Barnes Bryan; after they divorced his mother married author John O'Hara.[4]

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.[2][5][6] He was an intelligence officer.

Bryan sold his first short story to The New Yorker in 1961.[7]

He was editor of the satirical Monocle (from 1961 until 1965), 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).[2][8]

His first novel, P. S. Wilkinson, won the Harper Prize in 1965.[5]

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.[9][10] One of the real-life characters featured in the book was future Operation Desert Storm commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

It was made into an Emmy-winning 1979 television movie of the same name, for which he shared a Peabody Award. It's also been cited in professional military studies.[11]

Bryan died from cancer on December 15, 2009 at his home in Guilford, Connecticut.[12]

Works

Bryan contributed articles to many periodicals, including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Esquire, Harper's, Saturday Review, and The Weekly Standard. He additionally author the narration for the 1963 Swedish film The Face of War.

Books (non-fiction)

• Friendly Fire. New York City: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976.[13]

Adapted by Fay Kanin into the 1979 television movie of the same name. A Book-of-the-Month Club selected alternate.

• The National Air and Space Museum. New York City: Abrams Books, 1979.

A Book-of-the-Month Club selected alternate. Second edition included photographs by Jonathan Wallen, 1988.

• The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. New York City: Abrams Books, 1987.
• Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T.. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. ISBN 0679429751.

Books (novels)

• P. S. Wilkinson. New York City: Harper & Row, 1965.

"Portions of this novel appeared originally in The New Yorker."

• The Great Dethriffe. New York City: Dutton, 1970.
• Beautiful Women; Ugly Scenes. New York City: Doubleday, 1983. ISBN 0440305365.

A Literary Guild alternate.

Book contributions

• "Introduction." In the Eye of Desert Storm: Photographers of the Gulf War. New York City: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. / Professional Photography Division of Eastman Kodak Company, 1991. ISBN 0810934604 / ISBN 978-0810934603.

Book reviews

• "By War Possessed." Review of Winners and Losers by Gloria Emerson. Saturday Review, February 5, 1977, pp. 22-23.
• "Combat Junky." Review of A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo. Saturday Review, June 11, 1977, pp. 36-37.

Short stories

• "So Much Unfairness of Things." The New Yorker, June 2, 1962, p. 31. Full text available.

A Literary Guild selection.

References

1. Obituary London Independent, March 25, 2010.
2. 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 : April 5, 2001
3. Bryan, C.D.B. (1958). "Son of a Beach". The Yale Record. New Haven: Yale Record.
4. Tarter, Brent. "Joseph Bryan III (1904–1993)". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
5. "A Prize Case of Angst". Time. February 5, 1965. Retrieved April 1, 2009. 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.
6. 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. Retrieved April 1, 2009.
7. About the author. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter's Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T. New York City: Arkana Publishing, 1995. ISBN 0140195270 / ISBN 978-0140195279.
8. Steven Heller (March 3, 2007). "The Other Monocle, an article by Steven Heller". Archived from the original on June 21, 2009. Retrieved March 31, 2009. 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
9. Sheppard, R. Z. (April 19, 1976). "Prairie Protest". Time. Retrieved March 31, 2009.
10. 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 978-0-313-29949-0. Retrieved March 31, 2009.
11. 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. Archived from the original on March 30, 2009. Retrieved March 31, 2009.
12. Bruce Weber. "C. Bryan, 73, 'Friendly Fire' Writer, Dies." The New York Times, December 17, 2009, p. A41. Archived from the original.
13. Sherrill, Robert. "Friendly Fire." Review of Friendly Fire by C. D. B. Bryan. The New York Times, May 9, 1976, pp. 199-200. Archived from the original.

Bibliography

• Connery, Thomas B. (ed.). Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol 29. Detroit: Gale, 1984.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 185: American Literary Journalists, 1945–1995. Detroit: Gale, 1997.
• Schroeder, Eric James. Vietnam, We've All Been There: Interviews with American Writers. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992.
• Sims, Norman (ed.). The Literary Journalists. New York City: Ballantine, 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.
• The 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.
• The New York Times, February 1, 1965; October 21, 1970; May 12, 1976; August 9, 1983.
• The 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.
• The 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.

External links

• Selected works at Unz Review
• Boxes in the Attic ("Stories discovered inside 67 boxes of books, letters, photos and other items left to me and my sisters by our father, author C.D.B. Bryan, who passed away in December of 2009") – reminiscences about Bryan by his son, Saint George Bryan.
• C. D. B. Bryan Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.