The alumni newsletter of Antioch College Fall 2004
The alumni newsletter of Antioch College Fall 2004
Martha Tod Dudman ’74 recently came back to Antioch as part of her book tour, promoting her latest memoir Expecting to Fly. Dudman of East Harbor, Maine, hit the bestseller lists in 2001 with her first memoir Augusta, Gone. I sat down with her to talk about Antioch College, the late 60s, and writing.
Rachel: How did you settle on Antioch College?
M: When it came time to apply for college, I just couldn’t see myself going. I would look at these college handbooks with these pictures of girls in plaid skirts—this was still the late 60s—reading books on a grassy lawn. I just knew this wasn’t going to be me! So I was thinking I just wouldn’t go to college. And then a friend told me about Antioch. My mom and I came out here in November of 1968. I remember looking out at the landscape—these grey and brown squares of land—as the plane flew into the tiny Dayton Airport. I loved it. I came to the campus and felt like I was home.
R: What was Antioch like when you started in 1969?
M: At that time, the campus was hopping, and it was very, very casual. There were dogs roaming the halls. You’d go to class barefoot and stay up all night. But, to me, there was a very good spirit, which was partly the spirit of Antioch and partly the spirit of the times. There was such a great feeling in the late 60s that you were a part of something big. You were a part of a new movement that had new costumes, new music, new literature and new politics. It was going to end the war and change the government and the way people lived. People were not going to be repressed and frightened and separated from each other. We were all going to be understanding and multicultural. It was a very exciting time. Antioch, it felt like, was the center of that.
The downside of it was that that extreme freedom was abused by many of us. Nobody was telling you: “Don’t trip three times this week, Martha.” Nobody was saying “Do you think it’s a good idea to hitchhike to Chicago all by yourself, Martha?” Some people fell by the wayside. That was the darker side of that time. For the first year and a half, my Antioch career was all about getting stoned, getting laid and dancing.
R: What changed all that?
M: A wonderful thing about Antioch is that it offers opportunities if you can just grab them. For me the first opportunity was Alastair Reid, a Scottish poet who also translated a lot of Latin American writers. He was a visiting professor at Antioch for a year.
Reid liked my poetry. He got it. He introduced me to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is back on the charts but wasn’t then, Pablo Neruda and some of these writers who thought the way I thought and wrote the way I want to write. Eric Horsting was a teacher of mine who was also great. Nick Crone ran a poetry magazine, and he taught for a year at Antioch. I wrote a lot for him my second year, and he also brought Robert Bly to campus. Bly did Teeth, Mother, Naked at Last in Kelly Hall and had a party afterwards where he was completely drunk on exuberance. It was fabulous. He was booming with vitality. Here I was, this stoned, semi-depressed, wild girl and these were the hooks that got me wanting to be straight enough to write.
R: Have you been writing consistently since Antioch?
M: No! I wrote and wrote and wrote and then I gave up. I was a wimp! I didn’t know about rewriting. I didn’t know about the work. I gave up for a few years and had the kids. If you’re a writer and you’re not writing, you get this feeling like you ate too much too fast. I had that feeling for a while so, when my kids were babies, I called up the University of Maine and talked to this poet Constance Hunting, who taught creative writing at the university. She ran Puckerbrush Press, and, at that time, they published three or four books a year. For about six years, off and on, I would go up once a week and go into her office with things I had written in the week. We would read them and talk about them. In 1989, she published my novella and some short stories in a book, Dawn.
Right at that same time, I was divorced and working part time at the radio station my parents owned. I had these two little kids. My mother wanted to stop working at the radio station and she offered me the job as general manager. I had a choice. Be the broke writer or take a responsible job with benefits and a reasonable salary and learn how to run a business. So I put the writing away for ten years.
R: How did you find your way back to writing?
M: In the late 90s, my daughter started doing everything I had done and then some. At the same time, things were changing in the business world. In a year’s time, I saved my daughter’s life and sold the radio stations. Suddenly, I was in my late 40s, my daughter was in treatment in Oregon, and the business that had been consuming me was gone. It was wintertime and I was in Maine. I was going to start a new job as a fundraiser but I hadn’t yet. I had six weeks and I thought: “I’m gonna write a book.” I wrote what started as a novel and then turned into Augusta, Gone.
Two things happen when you write something like this. One thing happens for you as the writer, it allows you to take something that is formless, mysterious, painful, personal and give it shape and substance and form. In doing that, you’re making it into art and cleansing yourself. It’s better than talking about it. It’s an amazing experience. The other thing that happens is something that you give to the world. I didn’t understand this until I wrote Augusta, Gone and people thanked me for giving them the forum to think about their own feelings.
R: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
M: We read other people’s stories to read about ourselves. It’s a tremendous gift that you can only give if you’re willing to be honest. We’re all crouched around our secrets, but, if one person in the room says, “Here it is!” everybody else is free. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. Write it all.