Book Review: “The Men Can’t Be Saved” by Ben Purkert
A Distinct Brand
If you’ve had any experience working for a digital marketing or branding agency, you’ll be able to appreciate poet Ben Purkert’s debut novel, The Men Can’t Be Saved. The book takes place within one of these agencies in New York City in the last decade (the novel is set in 2014), but even if your tenure with one was more like 15 or almost 20 years ago — as mine was — the working environment hasn’t changed too much even by the lightning-fast changes that are standard in the industry. Branding agencies such as the novel’s fictitious RazorBeat (a sly nod to the real-life Razorfish?) employ plastic people who care more about what you’ve done as opposed to who you are. The tactile details are also right: these agencies have boardrooms cutely named after famous New York landmarks or (in my case when I was working for one of these firms) conspiracy theories. You can see a lot of reality in this book, even if it is branded (sorry!) by the publisher as a satire. It works as a send-up of many things: toxic masculinity, religion, addictions, and more. However, the tone of this novel is pretty sardonic. If you like that sort of thing, you’re going to find a lot to be pleased with in this fine book.
As was the case with Edan Lepucki’s Time’s Mouth (which I recently reviewed), this is a book that’s heavy on the plot — and to adequately explain it might be giving vast swaths of the novel away. It’s about a twentysomething young Jewish man named Seth who is both a womanizer and a pill-popper. He works as a junior copywriter for the aforementioned branding agency, and one of his taglines has gone viral. However, as is wont with these businesses, you’re only as popular as your last successful piece of work, and Seth finds himself losing his job — and humbling himself by taking a retail position at a coffee and chocolate shop (and there’s a distinction between those and just regular coffee shops, as the book informs us). In any event, Seth was having sex with a co-worker at his branding job right in the office late at night and then falls for a different female co-worker at his new job. The latter suddenly disappears and finds herself in a recovery house in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Seth follows her and winds up befriending an Orthodox rabbi and his family en route. Meanwhile, a hypermasculine co-worker from the branding gig is tailing Seth as he’s borrowed his Land Rover, and, as the saying goes, wacky hijinks ensue.
The Men Can’t Be Saved shares some common ground with other recently published titles. If you took the tone of a Sam Lipsyte novel, such as No One Left to Come Looking for You, and had it get mugged by a Matthew Binder book (Pure Cosmos Club) on a street corner, the result would be the novel I’m reviewing right here. It’s quite bracingly funny at points, even if it might not be the most realistic depiction of lives lived on the planet. It uses an exaggerated swagger to reach its effect, meaning that our hero is put into more humbling and humiliating positions as the novel progresses, which gives it a slight commonality with John Waters’ recently published Liarmouth. Thus, there are a lot of different feels to this work — it’s sometimes garish, it’s sometimes whimsical, it’s sometimes outlandish. However, it does a generally good job of adhering well, though some may complain that it takes a little long for the road novel aspect of the plot to kick in. When it comes right down to it, this is a fun novel — and, in some ways, little more. That’s even though this novel winds up having its share of things to say.
Overall, I was impressed with Purkert’s prose and the number of gags and bon mots he generally was able to fit onto each page. The funny stuff is unrelenting and doesn’t give up for a moment, which was a quality I was in awe of. It’s evident that much work went into rewriting and editing this into its present form, but it generally reads as though this is all off the cuff. Suffice to say, you should read this book if you like a little dark comedy. However, it will be an acquired taste for some. This is a novel that focuses on the crassly commercial and prefabricated society we live in — and how fake and meaningless it all is. All in all, there’s a lot to like here for select readers, and the book comes recommended even if it feels somewhat derivative of other successful writers of this vein. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy, but it’s a very good facsimile. If you can live with smug, sarcastic writing, you’ll be bound to enjoy this one immensely.
Ben Purkert’s The Men Can’t Be Saved was published by The Overlook Press / Abrams on August 1, 2023.
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