A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s 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 Rotolo’s 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 women’s 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.

蘇西·羅托洛（Suze Rotolo,1943.11~2011.2）

美國藝術傢，鮑勃·迪倫一九六零年代格林威治村成長期的女友。在《放任自流的鮑勃·迪倫》封套上，她和迪倫相擁走在冰天雪地的瓊斯街頭的那幀溫暖圖像，已然成為那個大時代的圖騰符號之一。熱愛詩歌、戲劇，少年時代即積極投身民權運動的蘇西遠不止是封套女孩那麼簡單。她是迪倫一些最偉大情歌背後的“繆斯女神”，亦深遠地影響瞭迪倫的創作方式，更被西方樂評界普遍認為在迪倫蛻變為“時代代言人”的過程中扮演瞭最重要的角色。

在與迪倫分手後，蘇西專注於藝術創作。今年年初，她因肺癌病逝於紐約。

譯者簡介

陳震，1976年齣生於江蘇靖江。踢過足球，玩過搖滾，做過醫生，現為自由譯者。已發錶譯著近百萬字，內容涉及搖滾樂、足球、藝術等。曾因獨立策劃加拿大傳奇民謠樂隊Cowboy Junkies製作中國概念唱片《Renmin Park》，被美國國傢公共廣播電颱（NPR）等北美媒體采訪報道。翻譯有《穆裏尼奧傳：葡萄牙製造》、《埃裏剋•剋萊普頓自傳：天堂十字路口》、《弗雷迪•莫庫裏傳》等書籍。