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| photo: Beowulf Sheehan | |
Ben Purkert is the author of a poetry collection, For the Love of Endings, which came out in 2018 and was named one of Adroit's Best Poetry Books of the Year. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, the Nation, Kenyon Review, and Tin House, among others, and he is the editor of Back Draft, a Guernica interview series. He teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. Purkert's debut novel, The Men Can't Be Saved (Overlook/Abrams), is an exploration of self-image against the backdrop of toxic masculinity, set in the advertising world, and is partially inspired by Purkert's time working as a copywriter.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Wannabe Don Draper loses his job, then loses his mind along with it. A novel about what work does to our souls. Plus sex! Religion!
On your nightstand now:
I'm finishing up Desperate Characters by Paula Fox. Jonathan Franzen described it as better than any novel John Updike or Philip Roth ever wrote, and you know what? I think I agree. I'm also in the middle of Menachem Kaiser's nonfiction book Plunder, about his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland after it was seized by the Nazis. It's an incredibly compelling read.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Tuck Everlasting. I can't even remember all that much about it; I just remember being obsessed with it, carrying it with me in the school cafeteria like the true nerd I was and still am. If I recall, the book is about how immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be. As I get older, and terrifyingly more mortal, I'll have to pick it up again.
Your top five authors:
I love the wondrously strange novels of Andrés Barba. Ben Lerner's mind is maybe my favorite thing to encounter on the page. I admire the heck out of Heather Christle's poems, and her unique blend of comedy and surrealism. There is no one who captures what it means to care for the world quite like Hanif Abdurraqib. I'll close out with Inger Christensen. Have you read Alphabet? It's an extraordinary account of everything that exists on the planet, and thus everything we risk losing.
Book you've faked reading:
Ulysses by James Joyce. I can't count how many times I've found myself in a room in which someone mentions this book, and I nod heartily, as if I have not only read the thing, but have authored a decorated Ph.D. dissertation on its contents. It's probably my favorite book I haven't read.
Book you're an evangelist for:
A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba (translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman). After I finished reading it, I raced to check the reviews, and it turned out that the New York Times utterly hated it! Well, that just about set me on fire. It is now my life's mission to right this egregious wrong.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I love the cover of Kaveh Akbar's Pilgrim Bell. I would've bought it anyway, of course, but the colors immediately drew me in. I love a cover that brings in a little abstraction, that allows room for interpretation.
Book you hid from your parents:
I was an excellent rule-abiding child. I never did anything wrong in any way, shape, or form, nor did I occasionally sneak out at night during that summer before my freshman year of college. Anyway, hi Mom, hi Dad!
Book that changed your life:
Every book changes you in some way, I think. It's not always easy--or productive--to trace that change. But that's why books remain so vital and intoxicating and mysterious. They do their work on us in the dark.
Favorite line from a book:
"The longing/ is to be pure. What you get is to be changed." That's from the poet Jorie Graham.
Five books you'll never part with:
It's really special when a dear friend publishes a book. I will always have these on my shelf, no matter where I go: Stop Wanting by Lizzie Harris, Eye Level by Jenny Xie, Love the Stranger by Jay Deshpande, All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky, So Long by Jen Levitt, and many more.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. Remember that summer when it felt like everyone was reading them at the same time? You'd step on the train, and you'd see two other people with the same book? I wouldn't mind doing that again.
Your novel is titled The Men Can't Be Saved. Do you really believe that? Can men not be saved?
I guess you'll need to read the book to find out!