Synopses & Reviews
A Freewheelin Time is Suze Rotolos 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 Rotolos 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 womens 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.
Synopsis
A Freewheelin' Time is a moving account of the fertile years just before the circus of the 1960s was in full swing with Bob Dylan as the anointed ringmaster. Suze Rotolo chronicles the backstory of Greenwich Village in the early days, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.
Set during the time when Dylan was writing the soundtrack to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, this is a wonderfully romantic story of their sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressure of Dylan’s growing fame.
A shy girl from Queens, Suze was the politically active daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Her story is filled with vivid memories of those turbulent 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. And like Joyce Johnson's classic Minor Characters, A Freewheelin’ Time forthrightly describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated artistic milieu before women's liberation changed the rules for the better.
About the Author
Suze Rotolo (aka Susan) is an artist who lives in New York City with her family.