We’re back with our second instalment of Book Club—all the fun of books, without having to clear out the beer bong before people come round. This week we asked Sam Sidney for her recommendation. Sam is a fellow girl Internet writer, her blog Style Paws in exactly the combination of fashion, writing, and cats that you expect from the internet. By day she’s the online editor at Pedestrian.tv for Sportsgirl.
A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo
I’ll be the first to admit that I will shamelessly pour myself into any non-fiction book that explores, “life in the 60s or 70s”. I know, what a cliche. Pamela Des Barres, Patti Smith, Legs McNeil, Patti Boyd… I have read them, loved them, and daydreamed that I was there, looking amazing in bellbottoms and a suede vest, of course.
But there was something particularly special about Suze Rotolo’s memoirs of the revolutionary late 60s in New York. This is a book that stuck with me. Her tumultuous relationship with the then up-and-comer Bob Dylan, her Italian Communist upbringing, her participation in and observation of a generation of change—all written in this beautiful, melancholic tone that really resonated with me. Suze wasn’t just sitting on the fringe of it all—she herself was a true artist and threw herself in amongst this subculture, inspiring politics, music, art and poetry. It wasn’t her love affair with Dylan that really captured my heart (though, it doesn’t hurt), it was that she was so passionate about changing the world around her, fighting for womens’ rights, and naturally—growing up along the way. Kind of makes 2013 seem a little insignificant.
Oh, and she’s the girl on the cover of Dylan’s record “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”. Sigh.
Previously: Book Club: Kat George
