|
A Freewheelin' Time:
A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
A Book by Suze Rotolo
(Broadway)
First Appeared in The Music Box, August 2008, Volume 15, #8
Written by Douglas Heselgrave
Wed August 6, 2008, 06:30 AM CDT
So many books have been written about Bob Dylan that it’s forgivable to ask
whether anyone’s shelf has room for another one. Since Anthony Scaduto published
the first biography, simply titled Bob Dylan, in 1972, an entire cottage
industry has sprouted. Rarely a year has passed without a new addition to the
genre. With every aspect of the bard’s work dissected, with tales told and
retold, and with nothing new to report, it’s no wonder that Dylan has become
such a curmudgeonly recluse. Who could possibly live under such scrutiny?
Of course, some of the books have been enjoyable. Christopher Ricks provided
an intelligent encapsulation of Dylan’s thematic concerns in Dylan’s Visions
of Sin, while David Hajdu’s Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of
Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina was a fine,
cultural remembrance. Most of the tomes, however, are nothing more than
exercises that completely miss the point.
Greil Marcus’ celebrated eviscerations of the influence that Harry Smith’s
Anthology of Folk Music had upon Dylan’s work — Old Weird America: Bob
Dylan and the Basement Tapes and its analytical counterpart Like a
Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads — often bear more resemblance to
an obsessive’s cataloguing of an archaeological dig than they do an evocation of
what is great and wonderful about Dylan’s canon. Chronicles, Volume 1,
Dylan’s own contribution to the fray, wasn’t so much an autobiography as it was
a delightful riff and meditation on the spaces that lie in between what has been
reported. Although the world continues to wait for a book on Dylan where the
writer gets more than the facts correct, Suze Rotolo’s A Freewheelin’ Time: A
Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties goes a long way toward
communicating what it was like to be around Dylan as his life and the world
around him were changing faster than anyone possibly could ever understand.
Most Dylan fans will recognize Rotolo as the woman who was featured with him
on the front cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, his sophomore set from
1962. Until the filming of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home in 2005,
Rotolo had remained silent about her early relationship with Dylan. The
experience of recalling those formative years in Dylan’s career opened the
floodgates of Rotolo’s memory, and A Freewheelin’ Time is the result. For
the record, she is not an eloquent writer, and it takes some time to become
acclimated to her choppy, conversational style. Nevertheless, Rotolo describes
this period in Dylan’s life in such an honest and unaffected way that one is
gradually won over and taken under the thrall of the story she has to tell.
With the help of Rotolo’s voice and insights, the Dylan mythology is stripped
away, and the reader is left with the experiences of a 17-year-old girl who falls in love
with a 20-year-old singer at the cusp of a period of great personal and social
upheaval. The stories that Rotolo previously had kept to herself now emerge
naturally and effortlessly as she tries to clear herself of what she calls "the
elephant in the room of my life." There are too many interesting anecdotes and
insights in A Freewheelin’ Time to describe without giving away Rotolo’s
tale, but the overall effect of her reminiscences is to change Dylan, the icon,
into Bobby Dylan, the young songwriter and man in love.
A Freewheelin’ Time is a delightful and unexpectedly wonderful book. As
its subtitle suggests, it serves very nicely as a memoir of life in Greenwich
Village during the early 1960s. Beyond, that, however, it also becomes an
uplifting evocation of the healing nature of time. If Rotolo had written this
tome earlier, she undoubtedly would have struggled under the burden of her need
to define herself as a separate entity from her former lover. As it is, A
Freewheelin’ Time is the mature work of a woman who has seen and done a lot,
but who now is ready to look back "with eyes unclouded by longing." As a result,
she is able to reclaim her past as well as the love of her young life. A
Freewheelin’ Time is a quiet triumph; it is an uplifting journey of hope and
reclamation. 
Of Further Interest...
Bob Dylan - No Direction Home: The Soundtrack — The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7
Clay Eals - Steve Goodman: Facing the Music
Woody Guthrie - Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949
Various Artists - Sowing the Seeds: The 10th Anniversary
A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties
is available from Amazon. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2008 The Music Box
| 
