Author Talk: Ben Purkert on The Men Can't Be Saved, with Hanif Abdurraqib

Join Ben Purkert and Hanif Abdurraqib as they discuss Ben's novel, The Men Can't Be Saved. Books will be available for purchase from Books Are Magic.

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. Thankfully, 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.

Ben Purkert is the author of the poetry collection For the Love of Endings. His work appears in The New Yorker, the Nation, and the Kenyon Review, among others. He holds degrees from Harvard and New York University, and he currently teaches at Rutgers. The Men Can't Be Saved is his debut novel.

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from the eastside of Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of the poetry collections The Crown Ain't Worth Much (2016) and A Fortune For Your Disaster (2019), the books of cultural criticism They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2017), Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (2019), and A Little Devil In America(2021) as well as the limited edition chapbook Vintage Sadness (2017) (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry). He is a contributor at The New Yorker, a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and is the only author in history to win back-to-back Ohioana awards in different genres.