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

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
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Book Summary Information

Author: Suze Rotolo
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: 0767926870
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Broadway

Book Reviews of A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

Book Review: There was music in the caf?s at night and revolution in the air
Summary: 4 Stars

Dylan's lyric from "Tangled up in Blue" came immediately to mind as I read Suze Rotolo's gentle meandering memoir of those heady days in the first years of the 60s when life and Dylan were young and folk and music were pure. It now seems a brief intermission of peace and purity between the sanitized and sedated nirvana of the 50s and the drugged and violent explosion of the rest of the 60's. Dylan tells how he responded, as "Tangled up in Blue" continues:

And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue.

Interestingly, in performance, Dylan has constantly reworked the lyrics for the song, adding and dropping verses and changing pronouns as he deals very personally with the things around him.

Rotolo's book has the same feel. It isn't a straight-line autobiography, certainly not of the tell-all variety. I get the feeling from her, as from Dylan, that at times she reveals to conceal, and that is in her control, not ours. The difference is that while Dylan and Rotolo were both so young and insecure in those days (as we see in the few pictures in the book which left me wanting more), Dylan was insecure from a position of emotional strength because of his grounded childhood; Rotolo was insecure from a position of emotional weakness from her more difficult childhood. She talks about her father's early death, her mother's drinking problem, her parents' Communist political leanings that sometimes resulted in financial hardships and a less rooted childhood.

Rotolo's writing voice is gentle and appealing, with a subtle sense of humor, directed toward herself as often as others. At times though, I felt the wall of insulation of her insecurity were too high for her to write over and reach us with her true story and personality. It feels almost like a third-person narrative at times, which in fact is how she herself felt as her relationship with Dylan deteriorated and she heard his response in lyrics that the world found poetic, deep, and inspirational. Breaking up with the voice of a generation is truly hard to do.

Now that Rotolo has worked through the emotional challenges of this memoir and painted her masterpiece in impressionist watercolors, perhaps she can go back to a second volume and tell us more of those vibrant days, this time opening and annotating a photo album and scrapbook with us and sharing the strong colors and sharp edges of those photographs of young faces and places in that time so much alive. Then again, if she does not, I can understand and respect that. Suze, you are now strong and secure, you owe us nothing, and we love you for it.

Summary of A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

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.

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