A Brief History of My Walkman
Perzine, Alleson Goldfinger, 28 pgs, antiquatedfuture.com, $3.50
Like its title, this square-shaped eighth-sized zine offers no pretensions. The author shares a brief and seemingly straightforward story of how once, in the summer in 1980-something, a very young Alleson Goldfinger recycled bottles and cans collected from nearby construction sites to raise money for her own Walkman. Goldfinger’s drawings of cassettes, plastic bottles and aluminium cans, and wiry headphones compliment the more lasting images that emerge from her writing. Especially the portrait of her mother, who introduced her to books on tape and subsidized said Walkman while also insisting on the value of work, wherever one could find it.
Readers might expect to encounter more about the device itself and all the great cassettes she devoured back in those days; however, aside from a surprisingly accurate thumbnail drawing of Tina Turner’s Private Dancer, the zine morphs into a story about memory, sound, and even grief. Once closed, the final square of the back cover leaves readers with one final image: a drawing of the fabled Walkman itself, wherever it currently may be.