My Dinner with Atwood

Again in Detroit, somewhere lost in the 80’s, we had a faculty member, Judith McCombs. She taught in our Liberal Arts program, and was quite an intense, bright, young woman. Her biography today says:

Judith McCombs is the author of two books and numerous articles on Margaret Atwood, and several books of poetry, most recently Against Nature: Wilderness Poems (Dustbooks), and Territories, Here & Elsewhere (Mayapple). The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New is forthcoming in 2005 from The Word Works, Inc. Individual poems of hers have appeared in Calyx, Red Cedar Review, Nimrod, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and River Styx. She teaches at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, and coordinates a poetry reading series at Kensington Row Bookshop.

As a faculty member with a fascination for Margaret Atwood, she worked on me to see if there was a way to bring her to Detroit. While an art school is a great place to be, it was very difficult to imagine bringing in a major author, even a Canadian one, to speak to us. My readers who have read the John Updike memorial will remember my difficulty in trying to bring him down the street, and he even knew who we were.
However, not to be undone, Judith managed to get the neighboring Wayne State University to sponsor a Margaret Atwood talk, and we would participate. The Canadian government may have been involved, but it’s too long ago to remember.

The night of her talk, we had a dinner in a local restaurant, with a VIP guest list (or as VIP as we usually got). I was invited, and had the honor (honour for my Canadian colleagues) of sitting next to Margaret Atwood.

At that time I had never read any of her work, (I have read most of it by now and love her work) and was set up to meet this great genius, this gothic novelist, and I was concerned that I was not worthy!

When I arrived at the table we were about half there and there were, of course, some Wayne State professors in attendance. I looked around for the guest of honor, and not seeing her took a seat next to this sort of cute young woman with curly hair, wearing jeans and a turtle neck, and I said, “Hello, I’m Arthur Greenblatt, Dean of CCS”.

She smiled and said,” Hello, I’m Margaret Atwood.”

I was dumb struck! Not knowing what to say, I came up with something like, “I never expected you would be so young and good looking”, or something to that effect!
She was gracious, I was blushing, and we both sat down.

OK, I don’t remember the conversation sadly, and I was not versed in her work so we didn’t talk about that, but I do remember it was a very nice time and I felt like an idiot.

We were like two ships that passed in the night!