Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning

By Martha Tod Dudman

Book Overview

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO BE FIFTEEN? MARTHA TOD DUDMAN DOES.

It starts with a blue hash pipe in a shabby field and a hot, tight dance at the Mayflower Hotel, and rapidly accelerates against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of the Sixties.

Describing a time weirdly similar to today, Expecting to Fly recalls a conservative government embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war, racial tensions, and a generation of disillusioned young people looking for something meaningful to believe in -- teenagers who, like Dudman, hurled themselves into a sea of drugs and sex they weren't really ready for.

With the same passion and brutal honesty that she brought to her first book, Augusta, Gone -- the story of her daughter's troubled adolescence -- Dudman re-creates her own wild ride through the turbulent Sixties, vividly recounting scenes you probably experienced yourself.

From the prim tradition of a posh girls' school and debutante parties of Washington, D.C., to the snows of New Hampshire and the campaign for Eugene McCarthy, from living out of a knapsack in Spain to getting stoned on acid in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Expecting to Fly takes us on a blistering trip to a time when the only thing you couldn't be was shocked.

Now, years later, Dudman reflects on that time and what it means: "Which was it -- triumph, exploration, some important journey, or just a big stupid mistake, a total waste of time?"

You decide.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416568115
• ISBN13: 9781416568117
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Interesting & Refreshing

As a child of the 80's, I found it interesting to read about the 60's. As a person who, like many people, survived an adolescence of substance and sexual experimentation and a longing to find myself and belong, I found it very refreshing. Pressures of growing up aren't isolated to "my generation." They are an age-old phenomenon, albeit slightly altered to the decade of coming-of-age. I loved this book and passed it on to friends who also loved it. I found the narratives about LSD were particularly great since it's something so hard to describe to others who have never done it. She hits the nail on the head and made me really remember what it felt like!

Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning

Dudman strikes a universal theme in Expecting to Fly, capturing the wonderlust and uncertainty of youth. Dudman's excellent writing makes this book hard to put down.

time travel

I love Dudman's clear focused writing, and I was curious whether she'd be able to successfully re-create such a turbulent, unfocused time. She did it. With her terse, vibrant words, she sucked me back thirty-five years into my old skin, or rather, my young skin and allowed me to re-live those painful, sometimes wonderful, self aware years. Interestingly, I found myself relating as much to her parents as I did to Martha. I'm not a kid anymore, although I surely once was, but now, I am a parent too. Consequently, the book flung me headlong into an out of body experience, and I found myself mentally rushing back and forth between Martha and her parents hoping to mediate. Of course, we know the futility of interrupting a rite of passage. However, when Martha extended her hand through time and actually tried to touch her former self, I felt validation, and knew that somehow, thanks to gravity, thanks to time, thanks to the rite of shedding old skins, things would eventually be ok. And they were, and they are.