Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys

by Matt Briggs

In the Virility Rituals of North American Teenage Boys tells stories set at the boundary between real men and boys in man drag. In the title story, a man tells the various myths associated with his manhood from the Breakfast Club inspired obsession with "Elephantitis of the nuts" to an unexpected bodily testing sequence executed under the florescent glare of middle school lights. The characters in the fourteen stories live in the shadow of a failed macho culture. These stories have appeared in Birkensnake, The Chicago Review, Filter Magazine, MonkeyBicycle, Roethke Readings, Spork, and TRNSF Magazine. The Review of Contemporary Fiction wrote of Briggs' stories, "As with the songs, the stories are all about life out of kilter, told with charm from the perspective of the odd as norm, not so much magical realism than delightfully pernicious absurdity."

180 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2013

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

[Kelsye Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading these strange, massively compelling stories brings great pleasure. A similar tone and perspective runs through all, of a young man not quite settled in the world. The women in these stories are mesmerizing, powerful creatures equally likely to offer love and sex or bite your finger down to it's knuckle. The men are bewildered, caught between the instincts of man, yearnings of artists and expectations of our modern society - pay the rent, be a good father, keep a job.

Matt has a brilliant knack for telling a familiar story, then adding a surreal twist. He manages to add in impossible elements, such as being made of string, or being literally, slowly devoured by a girlfriend into narratives so firmly routed in character and reality that the reader must take them as perfectly so.

Great fun. Read these stories in one fell swoop then spend the day wandering around in a state of marvel at our bizarre existence.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Book, already lent it to two friends who love it!