Booknote: A Freewheelin' Time

Hi, kids.

I just finished reading the latest Bob Dylan Book, A Freewheelin' Time, by Suze Rotolo (the girl from the Freewheelin' album cover, to you).

Suze, a visual artist, moved in with Bobby (as she calls him; too cute!) on a Fourth Street apartment when she was seventeen and he was twenty. They stayed together until 1964, when Bobby went to California and cheated on Suze with Joan Baez (sad face!). The artfully disjointed memoir follows Suze's adolescence and early twenties, spent in Greenwich Village with Bobby and in Europe with her family.

The general message of the memoir has definitely seen before in other '60s memoirs: in the midst of the chaos, it was a ultimately a simpler time with a youth culture who actually believed in something and were able to change the world despite their starry-eyed idealism. Yes, it's trite, but anyone even considering picking up this book should realize that it's to be expected (and young artists of later generations should be prepared to feel inferior and chastised). Still, I'm a romantic bohemian and a sucker for anything Dylan, and I must say that A Freewheelin' Time is not bad for its genre. Actually, you can get a lot more out of Rotolo's story, informationally and artistically, than you can get out of Dylan's own cryptic Chronicles, Volume I.

Suze repeats throughout the book that she never wanted to be "a string on Dylan's guitar", a legitimate concern for someone who could be considered up there with Pamela Des Barres in the "chick" hall of fame. She compensates for the purely Dylan-fueled appeal by adding snippets about her life growing up in Queens as a red-diaper baby; her career ventures as a jewelry designer, off-Broadway set designer, artist and East Village Other Slum Goddess; and other important, down-home people important in the early Village folk scene. Fabulous ladies and gents can get some rad home decor tips from Suze, too. Seriously!

The razzle-dazzle provided by Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, and Allen Ginsberg, to name a few, is still definitely pretty sweet. Especially the girlfriend stories, like going shopping with Bobby to pick out a jacket to wear on his first album cover. Come on. You wanna read it. You wanna be it.

It's definitely a good read for Dylan fans, but if you don't care about Bob, you may be a little confused as to why this woman is prattling on about herself so much.