First of all, thank you for reading The Kevin during its first year back “in business.” It’s been a pleasure typing out some thoughts for you. I’ve enjoyed the positive feedback so much that I have decided to enable a comment section on the newsletter itself. If you would like to jump in there with your own recommendations, thoughtful comments, or unambiguous praise, you are welcome to it. Hell, if you want to go really crazy you could even ask me a question.
2023 has been yet another catastrophic year for the human race and the rest of the living world BUT, for me, personally, it’s been pretty good. My haters said it couldn’t be done, but I became a legal spouse to a human woman this year. Shout-out to The Kevin’s #1 supporter, my wife Annie. Additionally, I observed an enormous manatee off the coast of Belize and enjoyed the sweet brown “cheese-related food” known as brunost in its country of origin, Norway. I summited a few peaks in the Adirondacks, and attended a destination wedding at a hardcore ski resort in the Rockies. The rest of the year was spent tootling around Toronto, puttering around my home and workplace, writing/fretting about writing, and sleeping. I also released a fiction podcast, which I will stop mentioning once I am satisfied that every person I’ve ever known has been alerted to its existence.
For those of you who simply cannot stand to see anyone else happy, rest assured I had a fair amount of setbacks and difficulties: while swimming along the Belize Barrier Reef I inhaled, primarily through my nose, several gallons of salt water because of an inconsistent mask seal. Near the end of that snorkelling excursion, as our boat skipped across the waves, I had to piss so badly I began rehearsing apologies in my head in case I had to pee off the side of the boat in front of the captain and nine other passengers. (I was blessedly spared this embarrassment, emptying my bladder several meters from the boat, floating in the privacy of the Caribbean sea). In Kicking Horse I brought my then-fiancé on a ski run so vertiginous that she became paralyzed with fear and had to be slowly rolled down the side of the mountain. Our Scandinavian honeymoon had to be twice re-routed on the fly due to “Extreme Weather Hans,” which incapacitated large swaths of Norway’s train network during the exact times we were meant to travel on it. Added to these misfortunes has been a debilitating “frozen shoulder,” a persistent rodent problem plaguing the matrimonial home, and various frustrations about the contemporary condition that are so tedious and widely distributed I will not bore you by repeating them. Worst of all, my beloved Toronto Public Library was hobbled by a ransomware attack, and the hold system has been out of service for months. For book sickos like myself this is about the worst thing that could happen.
On balance, though, it was a good year, and credit for that goes largely to my friends, family, innate personality, economic dumb luck, and most of all, my inaugural wife. Lest we forget the cultural industry that helps give life its transcendence, here are some works of art that have also contributed to the specialness of this year:
The G.O.A.T. Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron
In my previous essay on beloved works of fantasy I neglected to mention perhaps the greatest fantasist of all time: Japanese animation director and Studio Ghibli tycoon Hayao Miyazaki. I regret the error, because in addition to his iconic contributions to the fantasy genre he is also one of our best filmmakers full-stop. In The Boy and the Heron, which is likely his last film, Miyazaki plays to his strengths: portals to magical worlds, a deep concern with and interest in nature, pornographic depictions of food and eating, heartbreakingly cute critters, and a fascination with metamorphosis that would make Ovid proud. A boy named Mahito moves with his widowed father to a rural estate, links up with a talking heron, and goes on a bird-filled magical quest through worlds dreamed up by a gloomy wizard. Under all that ecstatic whimsy lies an undercurrent of intense, often melancholic emotion (if you have seen Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle, you will know what’s up). It’s impossible to say with any brevity what a film this dream-like is about, but Miyazaki seems to be working through the relationship between imagination and grief.
This was the first of Miyazaki’s films I saw on the big screen, and the beauty of its images was overwhelming, particularly one sequence where the frame is completely filled with a teeming swarm of pelicans. If you have not yet experienced the delights of this special filmmaker, I implore you to give him a chance, ideally with this summation of a singular career. And if you haven’t seen all his work, the Studio Ghibli back catalogue is on Netflix right now: Ponyo, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke—they’re all gems!
The Indescribable The Mask by Connor O’Malley
This short film by comedian Connor O’Malley sits on an opposite corner of the artistic map, though I think it’s just as dense with ideas and feeling as a Miyazaki film. A manic, ultimately haunting account of artistic failure and online radicalization, The Mask is full of details that men in my demographic category will recognize immediately. It’s the most on-point depiction of lost men and the internet I’ve seen in fiction, and a likely harbinger of our bizarre, alienated future. That O’Malley filmed all this seemingly by himself is a wonder. There’s really not much else like it, straddling the worlds of outsider art and YouTube comedy (though it is made by professionals, paid out of pocket by O’Malley himself). You can watch the entire 25 minute film for free in the embedded video, though fair warning: it’s as grim as it is funny.
Sinister Masterpiece Killers of the Flower Moon
Some say movies are getting too long, and this is indeed often the case with blockbuster filmmaking. But some great films simply need to keep simmering, accumulating ever more powerful flavours as the hours pass. Killers of the Flower Moon more than earns its considerable runtime. It’s a fascinating depiction of an unusual historical moment: in the 1920s the Osage nation became the richest people, per capita, in the world thanks to oil deposits found on their reservation. This wealth was accessible to European settlers only through marriage to the Osage, bringing lazy, opportunistic suitors into the lives of Osage women.
One such suitor, Ernest Burkhart (Leonard DiCaprio), marries and (sort of) falls in love with Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman whose sisters somewhat-mysteriously keep dying. From the beginning of their relationship Ernest participates, at the behest of his uncle (Robert De Niro), in the robbing and murdering of Mollie’s family and neighbours, while at the same time raising his own family alongside her. This all really happened, though the movie doesn’t really feel like a true crime story. It’s also not really a horror film, despite depicting some of the most evil behaviour imaginable, nor is it fully a tragedy, despite the unhappiness visited upon the Osage men and women and the downfall of its contemptible protagonist. Like other large-canvas films in Scorsese’s oeuvre (Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Wolf of Wall Street), Killers of the Flower Moon is an exploration of the ways human vice flourishes within a complex and corrupt system. The most chilling parts of the film are not necessarily the murders, but the images of the killers and their enablers happily participating in community life alongside their future victims.
Despite the grotesque subject matter, the movie is completely engrossing, briskly paced and full of striking performances. Unlike other “entertainments” centred on historical atrocity, Scorsese takes an opportunity, in the film’s coda, to implicate himself as an artist working with this difficult material. Clearly there is some ambivalence there about telling other people’s stories, particularly when the pain of those stories carries through to the present. I heard an interview with Ojibwe film critic Jesse Wente, who found the film so “excruciating to sit through” he would never watch it again. I completely understand why indigenous people might want to steer clear of this film—they know well what was done to their ancestors, and do not require a 3.5 hour depiction of it. But I do think this film has tremendous cultural value, and not just because it showcases a notable moment in Osage history. Just as important is the film’s depiction of evil, which is completely banal, easily compartmentalized, and occasionally even conflicted. The film powerfully shows that it is possible for a person to outwardly respect and love someone (or some people), even as they slowly destroy them. Greed and self-interest are not antonymous with superficial kindness. This is something people have trouble grasping, and must be kept top of mind in order to rectify our mistakes and avoid future ones.
The Sad Woman Vibes of the record by boygenius
The excellent LP by singer-songwriter supergroup boygenius features my favourite lyric of the year, penned by member Lucy Dacus:
Leonard Cohen once said
"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
And I am not an old man having an existential crisis
At a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry
But I agree
The rest of the album is just as great, as are the respective solo careers of Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker.
The Sunny Rhythms of Madres by Sofia Kourtesis
Electronic music is hugely popular but difficult to write about. It’s repetitive, unstructured, and full of samples and drum programming that doesn’t always feel particularly laboured over. Someone who knows what they’re doing can make a pretty good club beat in less than an hour. It might not be memorable but when all you need to do is keep people moving that isn’t necessarily a problem. But my favourite artists in the genre, like DJ Koze, Jon Hopkins, Four Tet, Jamie xx, and the dearly missed SOPHIE, took these limitations and developed a highly distinct personality. Sofia Kourtesis falls into this category for me. She’s originally from Peru but like every single other DJ she currently resides in Berlin. Despite, or perhaps because of, her cold Teutonic environs her debut album has a warm, vaguely tropical energy to it. She sings all over it in Spanish and English, but the appeal is in the rhythms and the joyful textures. It’s the perfect album to put on during a dreary winter day, giving sunshine, good vibes, and a reliable beat.
A Reminder That White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link Exists
I already wrote about it in my newsletter on fantasy fiction, but would like to put this magical book before you once again. It really is a delight, even if you’re not someone who thinks of themselves as a “fantasy reader.”
Hello long time reader, first time commenter. I...would like to know more about brunost!