Ben Purkert makes the path from poet to novelist look easy with his debut The Men Can’t Be Saved, which is funny and sharp as hell. Purkert has managed to take a poet’s eye to the worlds of branding and labor, creating a hilarious book filled with beautiful sentences and profound ideas.
We caught up over the phone to discuss finding room for comedy in serious literature, the use of metaphor in the novel, and the original NC-17 B.C. shock poet himself, Catullus.