Anyone Read Suze Rotolo's Book?
Just Walkin'
Mr Jinx
> Looking for comments. Is it worth reading? Axes ground or buried?
No axes ground. Not any bitterness. Little insight into Bob but as a
memoir of what it was like to be with someone famous in Greenwich
Village in the 1960s it is fine.
Mr Jinx
Temporary Like Achilles
I think it is well worth reading. It is filled with details that
bring that time to life and add insight into some of Dylan's early
songs. Take "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," for example:
learning that when Suze and Bob would walk at dawn they often heard a
rooster crow adds poignancy to what I had always assumed was simply a
folk commonplace. On the other hand, unless she had mentioned to
Dylan that she was going to publish the fact, it was unconscionable
for her to reveal that she had aborted their fetus. I'm not saying
that she didn't have the right to reveal this -- even if Dylan was
opposed to it, she had the right to talk about it, just as she had the
right to have the abortion. But if Dylan read or heard about it for
the first time because of her book ...
Temporary
M. Rick
I share your concerns. Because I can't evaluate this kind of book
after just a few paragraphs.
TIM...@aol.com
LIST...@listserv.brown.edu writes:
>Anyone Read Suze Rotolo's Book?
>Looking for comments. Is it worth reading? Axes ground or buried?
I posted on this book when it was first published. I found it lame. I also
found the original "review"
I wish I liked this book more. I wish I loved it in fact.
I thought I had my fill of folkie dylan, and quite frankly, as of late
much of my musical purchases and listenings have been pre folk folk.
Smithosinian Folkways yeah baby!
Anyway. it’s unfair to try and compare this chroniciles. It’s not as good
a memoir, and Dylan of course is a great writer. She is not, although
compentent and adequate certainly apply. And, she, Suze Rotolo, was certainly
one of the most interesting interviewees on no direction home. She was the
one most likely to have a good memoir, something to say.
And, on many levels, the book succeeds. It’s such an interesting, great
time to think about, bohemia. Beats, folkies, punks. People reading all the
time, art, philosophy, politics, social change, intersecting.
She’s a 60s zelig. Hangs out with Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, Jerry Rubin,
Fidel Castro. Ecept for Ronk, who he and his wife are well explored, the
others are sort of just there.
And, that’s the problem with Dylan. Except in few places, one notable being
the freewheelin album cover shoot, he’s a cipher, and she constantly pull
backs. I think it is a combination of her barely adequate writing style and
the likely fact that Dylan’s people vetted the dang thing. For example,
around the time of freewheelin, dylan plays carnigie hall preceded by a
tantalizing call from dylan’s father, and so after the show dylan and his
parents and her go to dinner. This is explained by two sentences, they are “
ordinary,” “pleasant,” and the father, “reserved.” So, here you have a
supposed tortuted young love affair, they live together, and she even notes that
her mother and sister hate bob. She even notes dylan’s prediliction of
telling tall tales about himself. The woody phase. It’s her first real love
affair and the first time she meets his parents. And, as a Dylan fan, we don’t
really know a whole lot about them, and certainly don’t quite know how they
interract.
Shit, four pages on a visit to Cuba in the early 60s, but two sentences on
dylan’s parents.
How many folks did she meet from the midwest. Also, she talks about her
jewish friends, a jewish summer camp where she was never called a goy, her
parents though italian were reds, activists, where she must have run into
some jewish folk. She works in a kosher deli at some point. She knows and has
observed jews. If this sounds weird, I apologize, but to not even notice a
difference or lack of difference among jews from new york than from around
the country, well, it’s just odd. I bring that up as just one possible
point of observation. She just says they were ordinary! Very frustrating. You
live all your life in new york, exposed to jewish culture and you meet
people from the midwest and they are just ordinary? It’s just a point of
comparison. I know I might sound anti semtic, and I just use it as one possible
example, and from my own experience (about half my family is jewish) and I
have known and worked with Jews all my life, and happy and proud and thankful
to have done so. And from across the country. If you don’t notice
differences between jews from the new york area, compared to from the rest of the
country, well, you are just not paying attention are you? None of them seem
ordinary to me.
Also, here she is ultra political in an ultra political time and no sort of
insight as to the Zimmerman’s politics.
No memories or limited powers of observation or did the dylan camp have
final cut?
Actually, she comes across as pretty self absorbed. She’s a real liberal
activist type, but like some caricture of a stereotype, she barely talks or
sees anybody outside the circle of friends, while at the same time complains
about infighting and jealousies among the folk crowd. It’s like she joins
the freedom riders and doesn’t even talk to one black person from the south!
Then there’s a weird contradiction. She says, “I don’t claim any Dylan
songs having been written about me.” Then, at another point she says, “
Another side made for tough listening. Bob sure knew how to maul me with crazy
sorrow.”
What the fuck?
At another point, she goes to a show with some other guy, leaves at the
intermission because the songs just “cut to the bone.” At the after show
party dylan seems pissed.
So what it is Suze? Whad did her sister and mom have to say about Ballad of
Plain D (although she quotes the birds chained in the sky lryic as
originating in some dialog or some crap.)
Did he play her new songs? Ever? Some more insight into some of the songs,
or recording. Nothing about that, even though he is invited to the Highway
61 sessions and seems to have a friendship with Albert Grossman.
Here she is, real political, a red diaper baby, reading Rimbaud too, but
nothing about the change from politics in Dylan. She re-treads some stories,
like the the john birch society ed sullivan fiasco, and that speech in from
out that americal civil what not, you know the thing Marty Scorsce reads
in NDH, but adds nothing new at all.
The so called abortion is just glossed over, mentioned. No details. It’s
not that I want dirt, okay maybe some dirt, but some details about what was
it like to have an abortion in the early 60s. No insight into the fact, that
well, Dylan two years or so later, marries a single mother and then has
five more kids with her, or some number. One we know of with somebody else.
The bumper sticker worlds best granpa he buys in lousiana in chronicles. He
liked being a father, liked making dem babies. No sort of connection is
made, like I said, it’s glossed over.
No word on any dylan connection afterwards.
Although, one interesting thing, this african american couple who
befriend suze and bob in back in the day, dylan rents “at a resonable rate,” the
house on mcdougal street (weberman) after he and his family leave town. Neat
tid bit.
Well, so, overall, really really frustrating pedisterian read. Although,
pretty interesting, and I enjoyed reading it, I can’t recommend it. Little
about Dylan, some good insight into the mileau, but lacking substance. She
tells does not show. It’s a book about a New Yorker. That’s its strength and
its great weakness. She prentends more honesty than she says and it makes
one doubt what honesty is there.
frinjdwelr
<TIM...@AOL.COM> wrote in message news:be5ed.2df06...@aol.com...
> In a message dated 6/10/2010 12:13:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> LIST...@listserv.brown.edu writes:
>
>>Anyone Read Suze Rotolo's Book?
>
>>Looking for comments. Is it worth reading? Axes ground or buried?
> it's unfair to try and compare this chroniciles. It's not as good
> a memoir, and Dylan of course is a great writer. She is not, although
> compentent and adequate certainly apply. And, she, Suze Rotolo, was
> certainly
> one of the most interesting interviewees on no direction home. She was the
> one most likely to have a good memoir, something to say.
> And, on many levels, the book succeeds. It's such an interesting, great
> time to think about, bohemia. Beats, folkies, punks. People reading all
> the
> time, art, philosophy, politics, social change, intersecting.
>
> She's a 60s zelig. Hangs out with Dave Van Ronk, Phil Ochs, Jerry Rubin,
> Fidel Castro. Ecept for Ronk, who he and his wife are well explored, the
> others are sort of just there.
>
> And, that's the problem with Dylan. Except in few places, one notable
> being
> the freewheelin album cover shoot, he's a cipher, and she constantly pull
> backs.
> Did he play her new songs? Ever? Some more insight into some of the songs,
> or recording. Nothing about that, even though she is invited to the
> Highway
> 61 sessions and seems to have a friendship with Albert Grossman.
>
> Well, so, overall, really really frustrating pedisterian read. Although,
> pretty interesting, and I enjoyed reading it, I can't recommend it.
> Little
> about Dylan, some good insight into the mileau, but lacking substance.
> She
> tells does not show. It's a book about a New Yorker. That's its strength
> and
> its great weakness. She prentends more honesty than she says and it makes
> one doubt what honesty is there.
>
>
So I cut your post down by quite a lot, but these are the salient points
that I agree with....She pulls back so much the book feels impersonal and
indeed lacking in substance. Tells and not shows is a good description.
It's an OK book, but seems like there was potential for so much more.