An Interview with Ben Purkert

Tom Sokolowski

Seth is a junior copywriter whose latest tagline just went viral. He’s the agency’s hottest new star, or at least he wants his coworker-crush to think so. But while he’s busy drooling over his future corner office, the walls crumble around him.

When his job lets him go, he can’t let go of his job. Unfortunately, one former colleague can’t let him go either: Robert “Moon” McCloone, a skeezy, on-the-rise exec better suited to a frat house than a boardroom. Seth tries to forget Moon and rediscover his spiritual self; he studies Kabbalah with an Orthodox rabbi by day while popping illegal prescription pills by night. But with each misstep, Seth strays farther from salvation—though he might get there, if he could only get out of his own way.

In his debut novel, Purkert incisively peels back the layers of the male ego, revealing what’s rotten and what might be redeemed. Brimming with wit, irreverence, and soul-searching, The Men Can’t Be Saved is a startlingly original examination of work, sex, addiction, religion, branding, and ourselves.

—ABRAMS

You can purchase Ben Purkert novel The Men Can’t Be Saved here.

Tom Sokolowski: Not only are you a terrific novelist, you’re also a terrific poet. A reader will understand this because, despite all of Seth’s flaws, your compelling sentences make him a delightful hang. I can’t overstate that basing a novel’s success largely on its control of language is an incredibly high bar to set. Reading The Men Can’t Be Saved, I was reminded of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius. But who were some of your influences or models for the novel?

Ben Purkert: I appreciate you giving a nod to my poems. I had no real model, but I did learn a lot from studying other poets who made the leap into fiction. I’d just finished my MFA in poetry when folks like Ben Lerner and Ocean Vuong were publishing breakout novels, and that timing was fortuitous. They opened a door. Which isn’t to suggest that poets haven’t long been at this game of experimenting across and between genres, but sometimes something happens at a particular moment in your writing journey and a few lucky sparks fly.

Some novels that I held close: Then We Came To the End by Joshua Ferris, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Eat Only When You’re Hungry by Lindsay Hunter, The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, The Bell by Iris Murdoch, A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba. In terms of other influences, the show Mad Men, for sure. It was a thrill to see the advertising industry exposed in that way, dissected with such precision and wit on screen. I wanted to see if I could attempt something similar on the page, looking at how the world of advertising/branding functions—or dysfunctions, I should say—today.

TS: Some of my favorite parts of The Men Can’t Be Saved is when Seth talks about writing. Here’s how he describes his process for constructing a tagline:

I begin by listing out practically every word in the English language. If a word has only one meaning, I discard it. ‘Refrigerator,’ for example. I can’t use that. If a word has multiple meanings, but one of them is slang for ‘penis’ in Mandarin (which, I’m afraid, is not an infrequent occurrence), I must discard that too. If a word has multiple meanings, none penis related, I save it. I treasure it. I pair it with other such words. I experiment with all pairings, all permutations, until eureka—the skies are parted, the code is cracked, the gospel is written, and all those double and triple and quadruple meanings are multiplying exponentially. A great tagline is more infestation than persuasion. It swarms the mind like a plague of locusts. It means and means and never stops.

Later, Seth shares some intriguing musings on ventriloquism, and Seth very seriously considers a poem called “My Sweet Fuckface.” These sections, while being incredibly funny, maintain a profound connection with the writing process. I’d like to think that I avoid making connections between a narrator and a writer, but I have to ask, does Seth’s writing process echo any process that you’ve used?

BP: When I worked as a copywriter at an agency, the words I used most often, the ones I most frequently relied on, were those with multiple meanings. A word like “forward,” for example, is a copywriter’s best friend, because it’s so versatile; it can function as a verb, an adverb, an adjective, and a noun! In fact, it’s so versatile that it’s actually rather diffuse. It says nothing. And that tendency toward saying nothing is, I think, very useful for brands and corporations, which are often in the business of making vague promises. You can’t promise a particular thing to consumers, because then you’d have to deliver it, and that comes with a cost. But you can sell “forward.” It costs nothing.

I’m reminded of these lines from a Matthew Zapruder poem: “Oh this Diet Coke is really good, / though come to think of it it tastes / like nothing plus the idea of chocolate.” It’s a perfect encapsulation, I think, of the governing ideology of brands in the 21st century. You offer nothing tangible, only the idea of something.

It’s a perfect encapsulation, I think, of the governing ideology of brands in the 21st century. You offer nothing tangible, only the idea of something.

TS: Seth isn’t the best guy in the world, but the way he treats his work is admirable. Of course, the novel swirls with his lies and delusions. Seth is certain he will be an executive, calls himself a wunderkind, compares himself to Monet. But his delusion is always balanced with desperation and obliviousness, so Seth is never just one thing. He’s as fully-rounded a character as any and exudes tension. How was it to write Seth? And do you have any thoughts or theories on what makes a great character?

BP: Writing Seth was the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. As much as I love writing poems, it doesn’t always satisfy that impulse toward humor (writing funny poems is hard to do well!)—but writing Seth, particularly in first-person prose, felt like composing a comedic monologue. We all know Seth. We all know that guy at work who has a wildly inflated sense of his own self-importance. And so, it was a blast, really, to explore that, and plumb the ugly depths of the male ego in that way. To lampoon it, sure, but not just to play it for laughs. Because I think of Seth as a tragicomic figure. I need you as the reader to care about his downfall, even if it’s delicious to watch the banana peel take out his feet.

TS: One of the most impressive aspects of The Men Can’t Be Saved is how you’ve put so many minor characters into orbit around Seth. You make some very smart craft choices by tying Diego to concrete props—the figurine and egg-shaped chair become lodged in a reader’s memory and thus Diego is remembered—but I don’t think you ever really use props as a gimmick to force characters on stage. And you manage the cast without relying on convenience—arrivals and reappearances (of which there are many) always feel natural and inevitable.

One of the things I struggle with when writing is knowing if I used a minor character enough to warrant their later appearance, or I worry that I weaved them in too much just for the sake of it. Do you have any advice on writing minor characters?

BP: All my formal training as a writer comes from poetry rather than fiction, so I feel fraudulent dispensing advice related to the treatment of characters. But one rule I follow is that if someone enters a scene, they need to enter again later on. Nobody just shows up once and disappears, you know what I mean? Because the spell of a novel, the gorgeous trick of it, is that the whole world is constructed in a way that invites total belief. And there are no accidents in that world. The mailman never just delivers the mail, and then is never heard from again. He comes back the following week, a few chapters later, and now he has a slight limp, and you have to wonder, what wild creature bit him on the leg?

Because the spell of a novel, the gorgeous trick of it, is that the whole world is constructed in a way that invites total belief. And there are no accidents in that world.

TS: Similar to unforgettable taglines, the novel has a great title. The title really chimed with meaning for me somewhere during the final third, because so many characters have thematic arcs that mirror each other, enabling the reader to have completely fresh takes on them. It’s all done very intelligently and paves the way for a satisfying ending, but you still leave every character’s fate up to some interpretation—and so the novel accomplishes an ending that’s, for me, more akin to the illusion of a magic act than a neatly bowed gift box. What are your thoughts on successful endings?

BP: It’s so funny you mention this, because I’m really (unhealthily?) obsessed with endings. My poetry collection is titled, unoriginally enough, For the Love of Endings, and I’m teaching a creative writing class on endings later this summer. Hopefully I’ll find something smart to say between now and then.

For me, I’ve always held onto something the poet Jorie Graham says, that every next line of a poem should feel “surprising and yet inevitable.” And a great ending should do that too, I think. Some endings are more on one end of that spectrum than the other, but a great ending is often one that haunts, at least a little. The last line of Denis Johnson’s “Work:” “. . .But you were my mother.” I mean, my god. I can’t shake it. Years! I still can’t.

TS: I’ve recently been teaching film classes, so I’ve found myself revisiting things such as the monomyth and three-act and five-act structures. Novels, of course, have been influenced by such structures, but are not formal pieces of art the way poems or short stories can be. Still, I think there are things (sorry to be so vague) plenty of novels seem to share. For example, novels overwhelmingly seem to have some type of ratcheting tension or acceleration in conflict at a point that could be considered the end of the first act. I’d argue The Men Can’t Be Saved presents this end-of-Act-One-escalation when Seth experiences a huge change in his ad agency. Are there any ideas about plot or narrative structure that you’re particularly drawn to?

BP: I’ll be honest. I don’t think about plot at all, and I know nothing about it.

What I do believe in, however, is giving a reader something to read toward. I’m very attentive to that, because I believe in honoring a reader’s time and attention. And so, if I’m going to earn their time and attention, I need to ensure that there’s always something compelling them to turn from one page to the next. It could be a big secret, or a small one, but it should sustain them and reward their interest. Otherwise, I mean, there’s a whole fucking world out there. Why stay indoors with a book? Why not just go skydiving or swimming with bottle-nosed dolphins or something?

The analogy George Saunders uses is bowling pins, and I’ve always liked that. As a novelist, your job is to pick out a bunch of bowling pins and throw them up in the air. Then, as the book goes on, you catch them. And the suspense for the reader is seeing all these things thrown up high into the sky, wondering how they’ll find their way back down.

And so, if I’m going to earn their time and attention, I need to ensure that there’s always something compelling them to turn from one page to the next. It could be a big secret, or a small one, but it should sustain them and reward their interest. Otherwise, I mean, there’s a whole fucking world out there.

TS: The novel opens with Seth pulling the reader close, capturing us with narration that assumes we are familiar with his world and his cherished adult diaper advertisement. This intimate nature of a first-person past-tense narration calls back to the ancient let-me-tell-you-a-tale frame and is used by so many incredible novels. The Great Gatsby uses it; Catcher in the Rye uses it; my favorite Ishiguro novels use it; The Men Can’t Be Saved uses it. These narrators explicitly treat the reader as familiar individuals, allowing, I’d argue, voice to significantly texture the prose. This device also certainly shapes other aspects of the novel. Do you have any thoughts, theories, or advice regarding how such a narrator impacts the construction of the novel either emotionally or technically?

BP: I love this question. On the one hand, I think I fell into first-person past-tense narration because it seemed the most natural, you know? I’m going to sit you down, reader, and tell you a story from my past. And given that I’d never taken a fiction class before, I wanted to limit my variables. Let me start with the simplest approach in terms of voice, so I don’t mess it up!

But what I love about your question is that makes me think about first-person narration relative to likability. You bring up Holden Caulfield. I think part of what makes that novel so compelling is that you sense how desperately Holden needs a friend at this phase of his life. And by addressing you, the reader, in this very familiar and intimate way, it implies that you are, in a sense, his company. And so, how could you possibly stop reading and abandon him, when he’s in such dire straits? For Seth, it’s a similar thing. Yes, he’s a schmuck, but the poor guy just lost his copywriting job; he’s pushed everyone else in his life away. Are you, reader, not going to stay by his side, just a bit longer?

I feel compelled to add that, in terms of voice, this is also what brands try to do. This comes up in the novel, as you know, but the use of McDonald’s lower case tagline “i’m lovin it.” There is nothing the American corporation craves more than to be on friendly terms with you, the consumer. Because maybe, just maybe, if they speak casually and intimately enough, you’ll forget that they’re a corporation. Maybe you’ll even fall in love.

TS: Regarding the opening, the first sentence of the novel is brilliant and a bit of a self-indictment. Moreso, on a second read, that sentence is entirely enriched. Do you have any advice about novel openings?

BP: Honestly, I spent half my life re-writing that opening. I’m proud of where it ended up, but truly, what else could I have done with those months, those years?

This is a very plain and obvious thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway: writing a novel teaches you how to write a novel. And so, the deeper you get into your novel, the more experienced of a novelist you are. What I mean to say is that you may, if you’re working on your debut, find that the pages you wrote at the start of your novel journey aren’t nearly of the caliber of those when you end. And so, if you write linearly, as I do, that may mean going back and reworking those opening pages endlessly. The good news is, you can rework them as many times as you need, if you’re willing to swear off sunshine and brunches with friends.

What I mean to say is that you may, if you’re working on your debut, find that the pages you wrote at the start of your novel journey aren’t nearly of the caliber of those when you end. And so, if you write linearly, as I do, that may mean going back and reworking those opening pages endlessly.

TS: Talking again about the narratorial style of your novel, in How Fiction Works, James Wood writes about a narratorial irony that emerges when a reader inhabits the central character’s mind under the control of an omniscient narration. He says, “We inhabit omniscience and partiality at once. A gap opens between author and character and the bridge—which is free indirect style itself—between them simultaneously closes that gap and draws attention to its distance.” With a narrator like Seth, it seems a second type of irony (a chronological irony) comes into play. Seth is telling us the story of his past, and so the entire novel is delivered with some degree of retrospection. Part of Seth now has a more nuanced understanding of the events of the novel, but still, most events must also be shown to the reader as Seth experienced them then—which is often at odds with reality. This experience first hit me when Beezy entered the novel. I was wondering, what was really true about his and Seth’s friendship? “Unreliable narrator” is usually tossed around in a discussion like this, but, really, every human is “unreliable,” and a novel always brings with it a specific perspective. Anyway, how was it for you, if even conceptually, to write with retrospective storytelling elements?

BP: I’m glad you mentioned James Wood. I had the incredible luck of taking an undergrad class with him once, and I’ll never forget listening to him go on for a full hour about this one paragraph in Nabokov’s Pnin. It’s this paragraph about a nutcracker falling into a sink, and Wood took it apart, word by word, with such infectious love and intellect and care. It makes an impression on you, I think, seeing someone who adores living inside the world of language that much.

This idea about chronological irony you bring up, it’s interesting. I wondered that too, when I was writing Seth. . . like, where is he, at the point of telling? Is Seth telling us his life story from a jail cell? From rehab? Or is he sitting with his feet up on the desk in some corner office, having made partner at the agency as he always dreamed?

Ultimately, I decided that I was all right not knowing, or at least not sharing what I know. I’m frankly not all that interested in what I think happens to Seth next. I am, however, very interested in what a reader might anticipate for him.

TS: Seth and Ramya spend a lot of time playing a space video game. Later, the game Braid is used as an enlightening metaphor. I can be inclined to sink one too many hours into video games. Do you happen to play video games? Or do you have any advice on how we can integrate gaming or other such distracting hobbies into our writing or creative pursuits?

BP: I don’t play, actually! But I had coffee with an old high school friend a few years back, and he was telling me about Braid, and I got hooked. It sounded like the most fascinating thing, a game where if your character moved left or right, it could reverse the direction of time. It was one of those things that stuck in my brain, and so it wasn’t surprising when it showed up in the novel. It was a convenient drawer where I could put it.

And, to your larger question about distractions, I think that’s one of the joys of writing a novel, seeing these far-flung parts of yourself show up suddenly in the world of your characters. What might seem like a distraction to you is actually integral to the life—and believability—of your protagonist.

BEN PURKERT’s debut novel, The Men Can’t Be Saved, was named one of Vanity Fair’s Top 20 Books of 2023. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, Poetry, Kenyon Review, and he’s been featured by NPR, Esquire, and The Boston Globe. He is also the author of the poetry collection, For the Love of Endings. He holds degrees from Harvard and NYU, where he was a New York Times Fellow. He teaches in the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program.

TOM SOKOLOWSKI completed an MFA at the University of Central Florida where he was awarded a Provost’s Fellowship. Currently, he’s a PhD candidate at Florida State University, and his fiction is featured or forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, The Barcelona Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. A veteran of the Florida Army National Guard, Tom lives in Tallahassee and is married to the poet, Olivia Sokolowski. Find him online at tomsokowriter.com.