A Freewheelin' Time

Appropriate words of wisdom from Jack Donaghy: Never follow a hippy to a second location.

So, this month's book club book was A Freewheelin' Time: A memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo. I'll be honest, I was annoyed more often than not w/ the narrorator. She just seemed to have this air about her where she clearly thought she was awesome bc she used to date Bob Dylan. Which is cool, and I wouldn't necessarily write off someone w/ that description, she was just annoying. And also, he cheated on you, a lot. So don't get all high and mighty.

So, a synopsis. She was Bob's girlfriend then just good friend for much of the 60's, prior to his becoming famous and then when he got big. The book shares how he made it big and also some of the other stuff that was going on at the time. Also, did you know she invented bellbottoms? (rolls eyes) The most annoying thing was the name-dropping. I'm no 60's pop-culture scholar, ok? I pretty much know the names of the Beatles and Bob Dylan and .... mmmm, Elvis? So yeah, when you spend 5 pages talking about all the super awesome people you met at Gerde's night club, it means nothing to me and I'm not impressed. And I skip those pages.

But I didn't HATE the book. And at times I think she got caught up in telling the story of something big and THEN I really liked it. Like how she and some other badass college students thought the travel ban to Cuba was unconstitutional (our generation would call it "lame") so they decided to travel there anyway. That was pretty awesome. I've always thought the protesting and rebellion of the 60's was kind of interesting, and it was cool to hear it from one of the people who took part. Also, her parents were Communists, and that was an interesting perspective to hear on the whole McCarthyism stuff. It's perspectives like these that you don't get in your HS history class (if they even get to the lesson on the 60's before the end of the year... I know I never got a good education on some of this stuff!)