"he was a beacon, a lighthouse, he was also a black hole"...

  half price books is soul sucking. in a moment of weakness, you could easily walk out with four or five books and not feel bad at the moment because after all, they're "half price". my section is the true crime jack the ripper section. when you've already read all the books in the section, it's time to find a plan b. scottish travel guides ( i have way too many because a girl can dream) or the beatles picture books. i went with the beatles. i was scanning the shelves when i saw a book. a freewheelin' time: a memoir of greenwich village in the sixties. it wasn't about the beatles, it was on the shelf dedicated to books about that strange guy bob dylan. 

  for the past few months, i've been trying to read this dylan biography that weighs like three pounds. there sure is a lot of stuff on that guy. i don't necessarily love bob dylan, but he is a fascinating character. in my massive "boborgraphy", one name was mentioned many times. suze rotolo. i picked up a freewheelin' time: a memoir of greenwich village in the sixties and on the front cover it said suze rotolo. i though it's five dollars, i kinda like bob dylan, i like anything about the sixties and it's not 555 pages long. when i first bought it, i thought it was going to be just another dylan biography. when it comes to books on bob dylan, they tend to be unreliable for two major reasons:

  one- it's written by dylan himself who doesn't have a propensity for the truth.

two- it's written by someone who probably can't remember a large chunk of 

their own life from the 60s because it's all a heroine and lsd filled wash. 

this one was different. it was an "unbiogrpahy" of bob dylan written by the woman who probably knew him best. the book is about a woman, a place, a time period and the man she loved. 

  
 i was hooked from the beginning of the book. the way she wrote and described greenwich village in the sixties was beautiful, her way of describing bob poetic. their relationship was beautiful, yet deeply troubled. dylan called her his "soulmate" and still refers to her as that. rotolo described him as "a beacon, a lighthouse,…a black hole". both were artistic and emotionally needy. they may have been too similar to have a lasting relationship. she was faithful, he was not. ultimately, their relationship ended in what she described as "mutual heartbreak". he had affairs. affairs with sixties figures like joan baez and possibly eddie sedgwick. they both couldn't give each other what they needed. they drifted apart. she moved out, she found out she was pregnant with bob's child. their relationship ended after she and bob decided to have an abortion. she loved him dearly and deeply. she loved greenwich village dearly and deeply. years later, she moved back to it just a few blocks from where she lived when she was eighteen with bob dylan. he remained close friends with rotolo until her death. 

  it's a truly beautiful book, one that will stick with me for a long time. a book that might not be everybody's cup of tea, but one of the most beautifully written books i've read in a long time.