Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A Sad Anniversary December 15th, 2010



From the Los Angeles Times

C.D.B. Bryan, whose 1976 book "Friendly Fire" about the accidental death of a soldier in Vietnam struck a chord with disillusioned Americans, has died. He was 73.

Bryan died Tuesday of cancer at his home in Guilford, Conn., said his wife, Mairi. He was holding one of his favorite shaken martinis when he died, she said.

Although Bryan wrote extensively for several magazines throughout his career, he was best known for "Friendly Fire."

The book, which started as an article for the New Yorker, is based on the 1970 friendly fire shrapnel death of Iowa soldier Michael Eugene Mullen. It chronicled his parents' doubts about the Army's official account of the death, their quest for answers and the transformation of his mother, Peg Mullen, into an ardent antiwar activist. She died in October.

"He was very proud of the fact that he exposed the friendly fire issue, and the fact that the government was lying to people who were as very patriotic as the Mullens were," Mairi Bryan said Friday. "Of all of his works, 'Friendly Fire' was the one of which he was most proud."

The book was turned into a 1979 Emmy-winning television movie starring Carol Burnett, Ned Beatty, Sam Waterston and Timothy Hutton.

C.D.B. Bryan, whose full name was Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, was born in New York City in 1936. He always enjoyed writing and credited his stepfather, novelist John O'Hara, with nurturing his interest in fiction.

Bryan, known to friends as Courty and Courtlandt, especially liked good conversation and good martinis -- always shaken, never stirred, Mairi Bryan said.

"He was one of the great conversationalists of his time. He could really hold a room," she said.

Bryan used those storytelling skills in several publications, including the New Yorker, Harper's and the New York Times Book Review, for which he did scores of reviews.

Bryan graduated from Yale University, was an Army veteran and wrote several books in addition to "Friendly Fire."

In addition to his wife, survivors include two daughters, a son, a stepson and a stepdaughter.

His son, St. George Bryan, said he will be cremated and his remains stored in martini shakers until a memorial service after the holidays.

From The Independent (UK):

The sense that the hearts and minds of the American people could be moved away from supporting their government's military actions was derided by neo-cons in the Reagan era as "the Vietnam Syndrome". That denigrates the real sense of disillusionment within middle America over the Vietnam war, a sense that was never described better than in Friendly Fire, the 1976 book by C.D.B. Bryan.


Originally commissioned as a single article by the New Yorker magazine, Friendly Fire told the story of the 1970 death in Vietnam of Iowa-born solider Michael Mullen, killed by shrapnel from his own artillery, and the process by which, in the face of official cover-up, his mother, Peg, had her middle-American faith shattered and replaced by anti-war activism. Bryan was so taken by the story he expanded the article into a series, and then a best-selling book, and eventually an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television film starring Carol Burnett, Sam Waterston, and Timothy Hutton.

Although Friendly Fire is the book for which Bryan will be remembered, in many ways it was atypical of his career as a jobbing writer in the élite literary milieu of New York, and a formidable and entertaining presence at the cocktail parties which are the currency of that world. Bryan came to it naturally. Courtland Dixon Barnes Bryan was born in New York 22 April 1936; his father was a magazine editor and journalist. When his parents divorced, his mother Katharine Barnes married the novelist John O'Hara. Bryan grew up mostly in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a rural retreat for many New York artists. He attended a number of schools and managed to enter Yale, graduating in 1958. After service in Army intelligence in Korea and Berlin, he returned to New York, working on the satirical magazine Monocle.

His early New Yorker short story, "So Much Unfairness Of Things", based on his being thrown out of one prep school for cheating, grew into his first novel, P.S. Wilkinson (1965) which won the Harper Prize for first novels. His second novel, The Great Deathcliffe (1970) was a reworking of The Great Gatsby. But little in his work reviewing, writing essays and stories and teaching in creative writing programmes, including three years at the University of Iowa, suggested the empathy he would find, and express so powerfully, for the Mullen family.

Friendly Fire became a signpost for the loss of what Richard Nixon called "The Silent Majority". They may have been won back in the Reagan and Bush presidencies, but the legacy of Bryan's work still carries power. The most highly-publicised critic of George W. Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was not a politican, but Cindy Sheehan, like Peg Mullen the mother of a soldier killed in action, while the friendly-fire killing of the former football star Pat Tillman, and the attendant cover-up, was turned by his celebrity into a major story.

Bryan was married four times, and his best novel, Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes (1983) is a bleak yet touchingly honest look at failed romance. He wrote two coffee-table books, on The National Air And Space Museum and National Geographic Magazine, as well as the introduction to an impressive collection of photographs from the first Iraq war, In The Eye Of Desert Storm. His last book, Close Encounters Of The Fourth Kind (1995), is a study of UFOs and those who believe in them, among whom was Bryan's father.

Bryan died of cancer at his home in Guilford, Connecticut, and was holding a martini when he died. According to his son, St. George, Bryan would be cremated and his remains kept in a cocktail shaker until a memorial service could be held.

Michael Carlson

Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, writer: born New York City 22 April 1936; married firstly Phoebe Miller (marriage dissolved; one son, one daughter), secondly Judith Snyder (marriage dissolved; one daughter), thirdly Monique Widmer (marriage dissolved; two stepchildren), 2007 Mairi Graham; died Guilford, Connecticut 15 December 2009.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Lost at Sea: Saint Bryan II September 1969




In late September, 1969, Dad learned that his brother Saint was missing from a catamaran he and a friend had been sailing off the coast of Maui. He and Aunt Joan flew out to Honolulu to do what they could. Notes from those frantic days include lists of people to contact.
The Coast Guard, Boat Yard, Newspapers, Radio & TV, Wailuku Police, Friends.
But there was no hope. Dad always said he lost not just an older brother that day but his best friend.
Among the letters of condolence Dad received is this one from family friend Finis Farr.

8 November 1969
Dear Courty:
It must have been an ordeal for you and Joan, going to Hawaii. I have thought of you often since I got the news about Saint. Losing a brother or sister must give one an especially desolate feeling, all the more poignant, I should suppose, when the one who died was still young. Saint was someone I always held in particularly high affection, because he was himself, gentle, responsive and bright.

It occurs to me now that he was ahead of his times--one of the first do-your-own thing people, and as such not fully understood by many But I think I had an inkling of what he was getting at. Perhaps I am patting myself on the back; if so, I should add that I spent one of the saddest afternoons I can recall a few weeks ago when I walked over to the post office around noon and picked up your father's note telling me that Saint and been lost and there was no more hope.

I telephoned your mother and father right away, and they were,of course, so brave and "good" about it that I found it heartbreaking, I say to you in confidence. The telephone to the voice is like the camera to the face, is it not?
Since then, in thinking of Saint, it occured to me that you'd told me, not long ago, that he was happy in Hawaii. So that part is all right. I just wish he could have gone on being happy in Hawaii.

Another thing--there's no doubt Saint had talent and I wonder if he was writing, and if you found material of interest among his papers. You understand I didn't think he was obliged to write or had to write, but I remember seeing some stories he wrote at college and they were good,
I do hope your work is shaping up as you want it, and that all goes well with you and yours
Yrs as ever,

Finis

When Dad called to tell us what happened (Lansing and I were both under 5 years old) he said Uncle Saint had dived off the boat to save a drowning friend but that the sea pulled both of them under. Recently, I was told the friend had suffered from "The Bends". He may have been partially paralyzed.

In The Great Dethriffe, Dad's second novel published in 1972, he writes that his brother had found happiness in Hawaii.

And I loved him because I knew for generations and generations back in all our other lives we had always been brothers, as we would be brothers in future lives as well...
"You know, pal" he said..."All these years I've been the older brother. I've always led and you've always followed. Well, I've just been thinking that I'd like to follow you for a while. You're my best friend and I want to be your best friend. I'd like you to lead."
"I know," I said, "but I like following you. I like you to lead. It's okay. And besides, farther on where the path gets wider, we can walk side by side."
"I'd really like that." he said.


Uncle Saint and Dad, 1938.