World Famous Comics: A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
By: Suze Rotolo Publisher: Broadway Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Broadway Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 384 Publication Date: May 13, 2008 Release Date: May 13, 2008
A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.
A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.
Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.
A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.
New perspective on an often told tale I've been a Dylan fan since 1970 and have followed his career through all of its ups and downs, the good albums and the bad (yes, there have been more than a few of the latter), and along the way I've also read many of the books that have been written about the man. Most have been utterly forgettable; some have been insightful; and a rare few have actually been enlightening.
Suze Rotolo's A Freewheelin' Time is, if nothing else, enlightening. More than just the story of a life -- or in this case two lives, Rotolo's and Dylan's -- it is an insider's account of a time and place that now seems strangely distance from our own. For more than being just Bob Dylan's girlfriend, or the girl in the picture on one of the most iconic album covers of the 1960s, Rotlo was also someone who, raised by radical, working-class parents in the 1950s, was steeped in the counterculture ethos that defined the early Civil Rights and Anti-War movements that Dylan ultimately gave voice to. In fact, fascinating though her insights into young Bob Dylan are, some of this book's most interesting passages deal not with Dylan himself, but rather with Rotolo's efforts to find her own true identity as a woman in pre-feminist America, and with her struggle to define herself as a non-conformist in a country that even in the do-your-own-thing '60s valued conformity above all else.
Finally, I don't know what Publishers Weekly was talking about when it took Rotolo to task for her having described Dylan as a genius who at heart isn't very honest--as if it isn't possible for someone to be both brilliant and dishonest at the same time. Give me a break. This isn't the first book to suggest that Dylan has often been less than decent (to say the least) in dealing with others. Stories about Dylan putting people (often old friends) down in public are both ubiquitous and legendary. And you only have to listen to some of the more caustic songs on Blonde and Blonde (and let's not forget Positively 4th Street) to know that the man can wield a song like an ax when he really wants to hurt someone. But that's all part of what makes Dylan -- the man of many masks -- so fascinating. Right? I guess some people (the reviewer from Publishers Weekly no doubt being one of them) prefer having their heroes depicted cookie-cutter neat and without any warts.
Bottom line: This is a fine book that will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about Bob Dylan, about American on the verge of social and political upheval in the early 60's, or who might simply enjoy reading about a young girl who survived a prolonged encounter with greatness and came out all the stronger for having experienced it.
Nice deposit in the nostalgia bank This was a well written depiction of the 60's. I was a Bob Dylan fan at this time and he was always quite a mystery to me. This could have been one reason, other than his music which I loved, that he infatuated me. Having never been to the village I'd always been curious about the life style there and Suze Rotolo put it together beautifully. I particularly enjoyed how she linked so many of the folk era greats together and their personal dynamics with each other. The book would be worth reading even had she not been the girlfriend of Bob Dylan. Her story was mesmerizing and without a great deal of empty sentiment.
INTERESTING SOCIAL HISTORY BUT NOT ENOUGH DYLAN A bit repetitive and poorly edited, but still a fun social history reaffirming a great time in American musical development...
Interesting stuff, writing was often flat, still: Recommended This book is for the most part, but not entirely, about the time that Rotolo was lovers with Bob Dylan. She's an interesting person so I was also interested in the stories about her time in Italy, her life as an artist, her upbringing as a working class red diaper baby, her experiences in Greenwich Village, the people she knew in the folksinging world there in the Village. Then, of course, there's Dylan. Interesting stuff. However, her writing was often flat and the ending was disappointing. She skips chunks of time. I would have liked to know more about her evolution as an artist and the ways she may have struggled to keep being a creative person.
I do recommend it to those of you who are interested in that period of time and Greenwich Village.
An evocative look at the early-to-middle 1960's youth movement in the U.S.that may surprise you. This is a really good read--whether for a look back at the early folk scene in Greenwich Village (starring Bob Dylan, of course) or for a casual history of that still important time that spawned the "youth movement" in the U.S. The hook to read this book is that it is written by Bob Dylan's girlfriend during his early career. But soon into the book, the reader realizes that it is not going to be a tell-all about the famous singer with anecdote after anecdote exposing Dylan's life at this very crucial stage. So, should the reader continue? I wasn't sure if it would be worth the time investment to hear Suze Rotolo's story. I did continue on and am I glad I did. What we have here is the story of the '60's by a remarkable, sensitive, intelligent,loyal girl who refused to be swallowed up by the cult of celebrity worship so prevalent in our society today. Yes, it was certainly alluring for her to be Dylan's girlfriend--with all of its glamour and power-- but she knew that she would lose her soul and never discover her own self-worth if she were to remain with him, despite being in love with him (and he her). Rotolo writes in a breezy style with the vernacular of the early sixties. She captures well what is like to be a teen/young adult during any epoch and adds the specifics of the turbulent sixties. A long list of characters(most from the folk and music scene) make an appearance in this story: Dave Van Ronk, Ian and Sylvia, Joan Baez, Trini Lopez, Phil Ochs, John Hammond, Jerry Rubin, Raul and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ramblin Jack Elliott to mention a few. My favorite anecdote in the book is a short one that reveals a most endearing quality of Rotolo. Speaking to an audience in Cuba just after the Revolution, she tells them that she is alienated with the constant use of the terms the proletariat, blue-collar workers stating that she was the only one among the American speakers who was actually from a blue-collar background. "My father,who had worked in a factory, never referred to himself as 'a proletariat'." Highly recommended for those who were young during this period, or anyone interested in the genesis and milieu of the young Dylan and his art.
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