Christopher Wild

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Pub Date 08 Aug 2017 | Archive Date 15 Jan 2018

Description

Three lives. One man.

Christopher Marlowe was the first rock star poet, a spy, an atheist, a gay rebel whose controversial plays thrilled audiences and challenged the government.

CHRISTOPHER WILD is Kathe Koja’s new novel, a daring remix of eras—the glitter and threat of Elizabethan England, a grimy mid-20th century, and a dark near-future of constant surveillance—as Marlowe loves and fights and writes his way through every dangerous age.


KATHE KOJA’s books include Under the Poppy, The Bastards' Paradise, The Cipher and Skin; her young adult novels include Buddha Boy, Talk and Kissing the Bee. Her work has been honored by the ALA, the ASPCA and with the Bram Stoker Award. Her books have been published in seven languages and optioned for film. She’s a Detroit native and lives in the area with her husband, artist Rick Lieder. She also runs Loudermilk Productions, creating site-specific immersive events including performances of Faustus and her own adaptation of Under the Poppy.

Three lives. One man.

Christopher Marlowe was the first rock star poet, a spy, an atheist, a gay rebel whose controversial plays thrilled audiences and challenged the government.

CHRISTOPHER WILD is...


Advance Praise

Praise for CHRISTOPHER WILD:

"Few writers have the brilliance and versatility of Koja."

 - CORY DOCTOROW, author of WALKAWAY


"Kathe Koja illuminates how the raw and vital essence of Marlowe has persisted down the centuries."

- SARAH MILLER, author of CAROLINE


"In CHRISTOPHER WILD, Koja has done more than re-imagine Marlowe—she has channeled him, wholly, ferociously, onto the page. Transcendent, essential, Christopher Wild IS Kit. The king is dead: long live the king."

- MARYSE MEIJER, author of HEARTBREAKER

Praise for CHRISTOPHER WILD:

"Few writers have the brilliance and versatility of Koja."

 - CORY DOCTOROW, author of WALKAWAY


"Kathe Koja illuminates how the raw and vital essence of Marlowe has...



Average rating from 10 members


Featured Reviews

Christopher Wild is an imaginative historical novel, a menacing dystopia, and a grimy city tale in one. It tells a raucous life, a claustrophobic life, a poet’s life, three times over: the trajectory of Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe in his historical setting and beyond. The first third is Marlowe as he faces danger from the Service for his role as an intelligencer, his famous plays, and his infamous pronouncements about religion and beyond. The second part is a twentieth-century tale of a gritty poet’s life, tied up in gay bars and covert investigation. The final section is a near-future dystopia of intense surveillance, where the poet known as X04 is fighting for his freedom.

Koja’s book puts an unusual spin on a historical figure who has been the focus of plenty of written works previously, from conspiracy theory novels claiming that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s works to Burgess’ delightfully playful A Dead Man in Deptford. The first section reads like another in this line, the fan fiction about the outrageous life of an apparent gay atheist spy turned poet and playwright from the late sixteenth-century. The fast-paced prose hurtles forward and the references are piled in, meaning that it can feel like a whistle-stop tour of every mention that needs to be made about Marlowe’s life. For fans of him and novels about him, this feels a bit too obvious, but the references are necessary for less knowledgable readers to be able to appreciate the later two parts.

The remaining two thirds of the novel tell two other stories, other outspoken Christophers who also write poetry, fight the authorities, and sleep with a complicated tangle of men. Koja takes advantage of the looseness of Elizabethan spelling to create new versions and echoes of characters and scenarios in a way that will probably delight some and annoy others. Every version reads Ovid and Lucan (the real Marlowe translated works by both of them), smokes tobacco (as per the infamous ‘all who love not tobacco and boys are fools’ line from Richard Baines’ list of accusations), and writes poetry. The prose style that captures a tumultuous Elizabethan London doesn’t slow down, and whilst it is slightly less effective in the later sections, it allows for a poetic style and an overlaying of words that matches the way the narrative and characters are overtly replicated.

This kind of transformative work is nothing new (and indeed there are plenty of examples in literature and on the internet of people doing similar not only with Marlowe, but with a whole range of historical figures), but Koja’s combination of the settings does feel fresh, particularly the final scenario in which the dark web and digital surveillance give a new meaning to the spy-intelligence-based drama of Marlowe’s probable life. Marlowe fans are likely to enjoy the ride, even if some of the ideas (like that he was forced into writing a new play about the secret service that led to his death) are somewhat out there. As novels, TV shows, and films about Shakespeare continue to proliferate (and often reduce Marlowe to a bit part), it is always good to see more attempts to present elements of Marlowe’s life in new fictional ways.

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CHRISTOPHER WILD is Kathe Koja's love letter to the great Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe wrote some of the finest plays of the 1590s, rivaling anything Shakespeare wrote at the same time. His plays are beautiful: extravagant, lurid, with larger-than-life heroes/villains, and drunk on poetic language. Marlowe was also in his own life a larger-than-life character: an irascible brawler, an atheist at a time when frankly avowing such lack of religious belief could lead to torture and execution, and with a sexual preference for boys (this latter was true of Shakespeare as well; but in Shakespeare's case there is enough "plausible deniability" for conservative scholars to try to wriggle out of it, while Marlowe's record is completely unequivocal). In addition -- or despite all this -- Marlowe is known to have carried out missions for Queen Elizabeth's secret police for at least part of his career. (Elizabeth was the first ruler to establish something like a secret police in the modern sense; the degree of spying on members of the public, of people induced or bullied into spying on one another, and of anonymous reports of wrongdoing, blackmailing by the security services, etc., was -- allowing for differences in technology -- about as ubiquitous in Elizabethan England as it was in East Germany under the Stasi). Marlowe was murdered at the age of 30, in circumstances that still remain mysterious.

Koja's novel gives us three iterations of Marlowe. The first is a reimagining of Marlowe's actual final days. We get a vivid sense of what Elizabethan London was like, with all the dirt and stench and crowds and continual scheming and plotting. His murder turns out to be a political one, which is entirely plausible (though we will never know for sure). The second places Marlowe in an early to mid 20th century industrial city, with its slums and pollution. The third is a science fiction extrapolation: Marlowe in a near future society with its ubiquitous surveillance via drones and mobile phone monitoring.

In all three settings, Marlowe is a man of intense passions -- for boys, alcohol, and tobacco, and above all the drive to write subversive verse. He is from a humble background, but highly educated, but he has abandoned his prospective higher social and economic status because it would interfere with his freedom. He doesn't really belong anywhere, due to his unique imagination and literary drive -- but he is more comfortable with the outcasts, the hookers and druggies and urban poor, than he is with more elite and posh segments of society. In all three cases, he struggles to resist being suborned to assist the ruling class through his writing -- he is too stubborn, proud, and honest to himself to give in, but in all three worlds his chosen precarity (which he cannot function without) leaves him open to intimidation by the powers that be.

What really makes the book work is the intense, gorgeous, restless onrush of Koja's prose (third-person, but staying closely with Marlowe's perceptions and thoughts -- what literary critics sometimes call "free indirect discourse." A character who never willingly stops for anyone or anything is conveyed to us in languafe that also never stops. Koja gives us an intensely romantic vision -- one that is entirely appropriate for Christopher Marlowe, the man turned legend due to his words, and to the life that we cannot help imagining behind those words. The novel is deeply inspirational today, when the political problems that the novel depicts in past and future scenarios is also very much a feature of the present moment, and when the kind of passion and sensuousness that the novel revels in is in short supply.

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This is the book equivalent of super rich chocolate; delicious, but best eaten in small doses. After just a few pages my mind would be reeling from the onslaught of details and images and information and I would need to put it down for a while. There is a breathless quality to the pages that translated across to me, reading the almost stream of consciousness prose made me feel breathless. So a challenge at times, yes, but worth it. This book is beautiful, sumptuous and overwhelming, and gets as close to the line where prose and poetry meet as a book is able. I recommend it, but let yourself be in the right mood for it. Also be prepared to develop a crush on Christopher Marlowe. Just saying.

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I was waiting for the right moment to read this book.
Beautifully written, with a charming main character, Koja's work definitely stands out.
I am absolutely interested in reading more from the author.

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Christopher Wild
by Kathe Koja

What an interesting novel!

To give a rough summary of the story, this novel follows playwright/poet Christopher (Kit) Marlowe through three different time periods and geographic locations. In each, we meet him during a particular time of his life and he relives this part of his life in 16th century London, 20th century USA and in a future, European location.

I loved Koja's character of Marlowe. He's charismatic, dangerous and sexy. He's reflected as a gay man, though, of course, homosexuality wasn't really understood or reflected in the UK in the 16th century in the same way it is now. He has several lovers in each period and, as a reader, you root for Marlowe even though you know his destiny. It's clear he has enemies from the state (he may have been a spy) and as a result of his criticism of organised religion. More than anything though, it's clear Marlowe's words have power in these complex worlds.

Personally, I loved the worlds of 16th century London and the future periods above the 20th century US part. To me, the characters and the worlds were more vivid, though, as a Brit, it figures that this would be the case. Marlowe's relationships seem stronger and the peripheral characters seem more fleshed out, somehow. And, Kit himself shines brighter in those spaces.

Koja's style is emminently readable. The first section is, by necessity and in relation to the time period, perhaps denser and more complex to modern ears. But I enjoyed that complexity. To me, it shows the muck and sleazy glamour of the period in the same way that "Shakespeare In Love" did at the cinema. Although the second period was also quite easy to picture, I can't put my finger on quite why I liked it less than the others. The modern period is clearly a not too distant future and, like the Elizabethan era, it's political climate seems stark with treachery around every corner.

Overall, I thought this was a well-paced novel that reflects a truly fascinating character.

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