Shoot the Buffalo

by Matt Briggs

The summer Aldous Bohm turns nine, his parents move to the woods near Snoqualmie ,Washington , "to reinvent the American family." The Bohm's are working class hippies in post-Vietnam America . Their makeshift pastoral takes shape in a haze of pot smoke and good intentions and ultimately births a vortex of personal insecurity and romanticism taking the family deeper into the woods to destroy them. Aldous oversees these tragedies, recalled a decade later, after he has left Snoqualmie to join the military in the buildup to the first Gulf War. Sweeping in scope yet unerringly precise in its detail, Shoot the Buffalo conjoins the dead end narrative of American masculinity with its stubborn twin - the Romantic ideal of nature - to suggest an ambivalent way forward, a path out of these woods.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

515 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2005

About the author

Matt Briggs grew up in the Snoqualmie Valley, raised by working-class, counter-culture parents who cultivated and sold cannabis. Briggs has written two books set in rural Washington chronicling this life, The Remains of River Names and Shoot the Buffalo. Critic Ann Powers wrote of Briggs first book in the New York Times Book Review, "Briggs has captured the America that neither progressives nor family-value advocates want to think about, where bohemianism has degenerated into dangerous dropping out." Briggs has published a number of collection of stories, including The Moss Gatherers and The End is the Beginning. Of his stories, Jim Feast wrote in the American Book Review, "All of Briggs’s zigzagging stories are told with great attention to the details of lowbrow culture and the contours of the American Northwest."

Reviews

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read this (I'm re-reading it now ... 😉 #yeah ), it seemed like something out of the Stephen KING I grew up with in the '80s ("Stand by ME," occasion for my first date, thanks Tammy REICHEL, was based on The BODY, and filmed in Oregon, after all ... 😉 #yeah ), and the later-released Leave No TRACE, in that people live in these woods, but it's not like some nightmare out of Upstate NY where Coupland and Adbusters' worst dreams and imaginations are realized in that home and vacation are so neatly segregated that never the twain shall meet ... all due to the proximity of New ENGLAND, and NEW YORK CITY, of course ... 🙄 #denial

This, and other writings by Clear CUT PRESS (The Clear Cut FUTURE compilation, Stacey LEVINE'S excellent & EXEMPLARY Frances JOHNSON, etc. 😉 #yeah ), along with Chuck PALAHNIUK, Jeremy ROBERT JOHNSON, and CARLTON MELLICK, among others (John Scalzi's edited-and-CONTRIBUTED-TO four-part sci-fi book about Cascadia, as well as certain writings about Occupy, and 2600: The HACKER QUARTERLY , certainly helped ... 😉 #yeah ) affected the writing of my Icosadyadria (2017, ultimately -- it was finished! 😉 #yeah ) more than I had even thought ...

A home in the woods. A car in the woods ... A SHOP in the woods ... 😉 #yeah

And then I canvass for Sierra CLUB, briefly, and they have one guy who complains that the waitstaff at Tiny's is "surly" because he pisses them off with good reason for them to be so, with his sense of entitlement and insistence that everything "counts" (you can tell from the WORD, already -- he thinks he's KEROUAC because he HITCH-HIKES AROUND TOWN, and I want to KILL him! And another girl -- from WEALTH; she's MET someone from the BUSH family, and says they're "pretty WEIRD," as though it's DISPLEASING DAY IN THE PARK -- describes the chicks at Buffalo EXCHANGE as having "an ATTITUDE," because ditto.

Never the twain shall meet ...

Kids today! Kids today.

What are you gonna do ...

What. ARE. You. Gonna do-- ...

#fatPIGMUSTDIE ...

#fatYASMIN TOO ...

#andIM OUT ...

😉

#yeah

-EJB/Orwell

(past LIVES)

[Frank Sauce]

A thinkin' man's pageturner. I can't think of any other writer off the top of my head who purely expresses the northwest-wet-forest more than in this book.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book won the American Book Award. It's a moving account of a bluecollar childhood in the rural Pacific Northwest. I love this book.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saturated with the setting of the Pacific Northwest - a boy's rite of passage starts out in the wilds of Snoqualmie and pits that mildewy upbringing with his life in the army....where his past generates his every thought, action and relationship. The hypothermic death of his sister and the inability of his stoned family to actually support such a traumatic event sums the escapist and lazy nature that complete Aldous' adult-family support network. A depressing read but so regional that, being a PNW guy, I had to continue.

[Dicky Dahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like several other books I've read lately, this one established a world and characters that I was digging only to leap away in time and setting to a whole other deal ( in this case, the narrator's future life on a Texas army base). I dig what Doyle was tryin to do and it's fairly successful...I was just a lot more interested in that initial world of the struggles of a semi-hippie family making a go of it off-the-grid in deep green and moist rural Washington.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the library cause I was traveling light & it was a tiny book. Pleasantly surprised by it. A little depressing, but cruising around Hawaii it was a kinda nice contrast to read something set in the chilly damp ol' PNW.

[Letty Lovechild · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this book, and where it was set. Reading books that are set in familiar places is my favorite. After finishing this book I feel like I need to just sit quietly. You are exposed to so much internal stress and it is very eye opening but also draining. It was a great debut novel.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a good one.
takes place in washington state.
i could smell the musty moss and feel the rain.
matt briggs is a GOOD.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book gets one star for being set Washington and two more because it fit in my purse.

[JulieK · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book really evokes the Northwest - I half expected to find moss on the pages - but in the end, I found it repetitive and depressing.

[Susan Honthumb · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were times that I couldn't put it down, yet other times I fell asleep.