Alive

Finished Suze Rotolo's memoir of Greenwich Village in the early 60's, A Freewheelin' Time, and was very impressed by every aspect of it. I suppose as a Dylan fanboy of the worst order the main draw for me was the portrait of the Great Man, but the great thing about Ms Rotolo's take on him is that he isn't yet the legendary Dylan, just an extraordinarily gifted very young man, often somewhat gauche, but impressively himself, as she makes abundantly clear. She seems to me to be extremely fair and perspicacious in her judgements upon him. As she is on her younger self, and that's the remarkable thing: she, and Dylan, are so young in the period she covers. It's quite something that she remembers so much (and something similar can be said about the Bobster's own powers of recall in Chronicles, Volume 1. I suspect this is partly due to the fact that both were so intelligent and observant, filled with a hungry curiosity about everything.)

But the great thing about her book is that it encompasses so much more than just a recap of their doomed relationship. She evokes an entire era, and is by no means limited to New York as a location. There are segments dealing with her experiences in London (briefly) and Italy, especially Perugia (at some length) and Cuba (surprisingly) that help the reader grasp the reach of individual consciousness at a time of rapid development.

She's also insightfully intelligent on the place of women in that world in the pre-feminist era. Indeed, her evocation of her own creativity and that of many of the young women she encountered in the period covered by the memoir foreshadow the happy changing of the times.

All in all a great read and I'd really like to learn more about Ms Rotolo's later life. I suspect it has proved a rich and rewarding one.