Kevin

Born David Agrippa Glansing in the Yukon Territory sometime in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the man who would eventually come to be known as “Kevin” calls an eight-by-eight shack in the Canadian wilderness his first home. His father, an elementary school teacher turned gold miner, raised him and educated him as best he could in that unforgiving landscape, but young Agrippa’s true teacher was the world. Every day while his father panned the nearby creek, Agrippa walked the desolate hills around their shack, often taking a volume from his father’s modest library and contrasting the knowledge of books with the knowledge of living.

He appears to have extricated himself from society completely by the end of the century, as no records exist to verify his whereabouts or activities from just after the turn of the century until the late 1920s, at which point he allegedly was romantically involved with a young Rachel Carson and going by the name “Marlon Josephus Werther.” The name and a variety of accounts paint a picture of a young man (though he was middle-aged by this time) immersed in the modernist scene, pushing boundaries in all directions and living a life that could hardly be imagined in the bleak surroundings of his Canadian birthplace. “Werther” fairly roared through the twenties, and kept himself afloat throughout the thirties. As the second World War drew in the United States, conflicting accounts have Werther fighting in the European theater, managing an ammunitions factory in Ohio, and living an ascetic’s life in New Mexico. No true evidence exists for any of these claims, but proponents of all three will swear to their versions.

The “Kevin *****” moniker appears for the first time in the early 1980s, just outside of Philadelphia. No doubt as a result of the newly minted “Information Age,” this persona has proven much easier to track than those previous. “Kevin” has put to good use his vast experience and penchant for unique names as a writer of fiction, much of which can be seen on this site. Should a day come when new samples of his literary stylings are no longer available here, the hunt for the man once known as “Canada’s favorite son” must begin anew.