A Dead Man in Deptford

by Anthony Burgess

Book Overview

Set in Elizabethan England, Burgess's first novel for four years centres on the life of Christopher Marlowe, who was killed in suspicious circumstances in a tavern brawl in Deptford 400 years ago. It... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786701927
• ISBN13: 9780786701926
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Stick With It, It's Worth It

While some have said this is a difficult book (and I must admit I felt that way at first) if you relax and stick with it you'll find that it will begin to flow very smoothly. Burgess takes us into the mind of Marlowe; his images are vivid. There were many passages that I had to reread, not because they were difficult, but because they were so beautiful. Sir Walter Raleigh introducing Kit to tobacco is marvelous.I have to agree with those who found that following the characters was a bit confusing. I had the good fortune to have read Charles Nichol's book 'The Reckoning" first, a true story about the death of Marlowe. That work is a great introduction to most of the players in Burgess's book. Please, don't be intimidated by "Dead Man", it is a pleasing and enlightening work.

Breathtakingly fine work...

Marlowe is presented in full here. You can feel him touching the pages as you read them. You can taste the food he eats, drink what he drinks. This is a visceral book. Burgess was a linguist, so, of course, the dialect might prove a challenge to some, but, in the same way that the invented slang of Clockwork Orange made the experience of that book more vivid and real, the Elizabethanisms of Dead Man only give it more depth and color. The "Elizabethanisms" of this book are, in any case, less challenging than those served up in Burgess' earlier, more difficult but also astonishingly rewarding Shakespeare book "Nothing Like The Sun". Disregard those few on here who warn you off this book, particularly if you revel in language that comes rich and thick and genuine.

Fantastic!

Regardless of whether you are a diehard Marlovian or not, Burgess' novel is a well crafted, loving treatise to the loftiness and the bawdiness of Elizabethan English. The story of Kit Marlowe, the Jim Morrison of his time, is richly imagined using the scant but intriguing information left to us. I recommend this book highly.

I didn't find it dull...

...or self-indulgent. I thought the language was the best thing about it -- just archaic enough to lend it an air of realism.Sure, if you like James Michener or Colleen McCullough, this is not the book for you; but if you want a good (if tragic) story, some brilliantly-drawn characters, and a breath of authentic Elizabethan air -- or just an antidote to "Shakespeare in Love" (which was admittedly just as brilliant in a completely different way), read "Dead Man in Deptford".

Elizabethan England has never seemed so real

I got around to reading Burgess just after his death, starting, for no particular reason, with "Dead Man in Deptford". I was dismayed on the one hand to find that I had been neglecting a terrific author all these years; on the other hand, I won't soon run out of Burgess reading matter. I immediately began devouring his other novels, starting with Nothing Like the Sun (an excellent companion piece to Dead Man, but not as gripping). Perhaps one doesn't "devour" Burgess; he is by no means an easy, quick read. For one thing, the neophyte Burgess reader will want a good dictionary close at hand (soon, however, you'll be able to pepper your conversation with words like "gallimaufry"). And there is always the sense while reading Burgess, for me at least, that I am missing some of the fun -- there are erudite puns and sly jokes on nearly every page. But for all that, Burgess never forgets that his job is to tell a story, and once drawn into the dark Elizabethan world of this novel (admittedly, it may take a few pages), readers will be richly rewarded with a walloping good yarn. Never before has Elizabethan England come to life for me as in Dead Man, and a dangerous, smelly, ribald world it is. Two reviewers have complained that the novel is dull. Let's see: Burgess gives us kinky sex of both the homo- and hetero kind, epic drinking sprees, vivid descriptions of traitors to the crown being eviscerated on the gibbet, barroom knifings, transcontinental intrigues, lecherous royalty, religious rivalries, and more double-crosses than you'll find in a dozen pop thrillers. If this be dull, then I'm not ready for exciting. Although a familiarity with Christopher Marlowe's work and his place in English theater would undoubtedly make "Dead Man" a somewhat richer experience, it's hardly necessary to become enmeshed in the intrigues surrounding his life. It's like Burgess' puns and vocabulary; readers can miss much and still reap the rewards of a truly well-crafted novel. The whole Elizabethan era comes to stunning life, redolent of smoke, sweat, blood, and Rhenish wine. Burgess fans may also enjoy a chapter in Paul Theroux's "My Other Life", in which Theroux hosts Burgess and a Burgess-phile at his London apartment for dinner, with hilariously disastrous results.