I have absolutely no idea how this book and its movie came back to the surface of my mind. I watched the film in 1975, I think, and I'm sure it was with Paul the film student. (He was also a drunk, and to date the only lover I've ever had that I allowed to hit me.)

Come to think on it, he's also the source of one of my most enduring pleasures, that of watching films whose books I've read or plan to read, and of making fantasy films of the books I read that haven't got films. Thanks, Paul, for growing me a spine and for giving me that deeply satisfying fantasy life. (He died in 1986, so this is more in the nature of valediction than praise.)

Anyway...I recommend the book to men because it's about us at our most male and least woman-centered. It's brutal and tough and awful. It's a clarion call to the smarter ones of us to look at what's actually going on in our heads and fucking stop it already. Not because women don't like us for what they've done to us, but because hurting ourselves is just damned stupid. The cult of macho is a male reaction to rejection and judgment, as Willeford presents it; this being what I've observed, it had me nodding along as I read the book.

Where the film falls down, I think, is in the nature of the storytelling medium. On its surface, this film's about how a man decides not to live with a woman but to sell every-damn-thing he owns and double down on the world of cockfighting. Ultimately this works out, in the sense that his cock wins the championship.

Not one single human female would watch this movie and think, "oh that was fun." The image of women in it is as emasculating damaging emotional black holes. Yeah, great date-night flick, eh what? And men come off as damnfool eedjits without a lick of sense. That both these things are true doesn't make them any easier to swallow. And on film, there are lost nuances because actors speaking lines aren't readers absorbing language use on multiple levels. So it's no wonder to me that this film tanked.

But it's a misunderstood work of art, Cockfighter is. Its darkest moments and grimmest interpretations are all true and accurate. That's intentional on Willeford's part, based on the entirety of his ouevre. (Go here to read a really, really interesting academic take on Willeford as writer and man manqué.) The levels and ideas that this brutal, cruel, emotionally stopped body of work contains are rewarding to unpick and enjoyable to contemplate.

For Y chromosome bearers.

The idea of the down and out sportsman/fighter/trainer on a path to everlasting glory is not very new, but Willeford of course goes his own way with it and makes it very entertaining (and informative). I loved all the detail concerning the sport of cockfighting and the settings as Frank travels around the American south getting back on his feet and preparing for The Big One all feel authentic. Frank's relationship with his family and the women in his life are detached, approaching the verge of sociopathy, but it highlights the singlemindedness of his pursuit. The entanglement he picks up with a wealthy widower and his would be fiance works itself out in only the most logical fashion.

Oh, and dozens of chickens fight to the death. But if you ask me, if I was a chicken I'd prefer to die like that than in any one of the hundreds of chicken nugget factories out there.

*3.5 Stars*
The interesting thing about this book is that it is essentially the classic underdog sports story that is popular in a lot of movies, television, and books, but instead of focusing on a football player or boxer, it's about a man who trains chickens to fight to the death.

It's told from the point of view of Frank Mansfield, a respected cockfighter who, at the books opening, loses all of his money, his car, his mobile home, and his ace cock Sandspur after being defeated by his rival. Now, with only a few bucks in his pocket and the clothes on his back, we witness him doggedly work his way to the top, in his pursuit of the Cockfighter of the Year Award.

Frank isn't the best of guys and is, for all intents and purposes, an asshole. But you feel his complete passion and dedication to not only the game, but the art and craft of conditioning a fighting cock. It's actually pretty inspiring, but it's also pretty sad as he shuns and alienates many people who love him in his pursuit of his dream. We even find him years into a vow of silence he's taken until he wins the award. This level of passion is what drives the novel. It's hard to see a guy so dedicated and not root for him to win. Also, the level of detail in depicting the world of Southern cockfighting is staggering. You get the feeling that Willeford definitely has some first-hand knowledge!

The story itself is actually pretty traditional and I could even see some of the cock-training marathons in my head as I read and also hear the Rocky movie montage music playing in the background! Maybe that was a little disappointing, how traditional the plot is. There's not really much else to the story, which surprised me after reading both n  Pick-upn and n  Wild Wivesn from Willeford, both of which felt anything but traditional. And obviously there's a lot of violence involving chickens, which is really hard to take at times, so if you are really sensitive about that stuff, you shouldn't read this one.

The Moby Dick of noir crime novels.

Life is a violent mechanism, navigated by ritual, devotion, endurance. The less you say, the better. Just dig in and know your business. That is the ultimate story told in COCKFIGHTER, where the men in the southern cockfighting scene could be replaced by lawyers in a courtroom or commanders of space cruisers. Each man titrates his humanity for the mechanism hoping to limp out of the pit alive.

I started reading "Maldoror," originally, by the Comte de Lautreaumont, and threw it aside because fifty pages in, I'm pretty sure it's schlock crap. I should've known, picking up a book that an awful, awful, AWFUL write like William Vollmann considers his favorite. But it had a good blurb on the back from some great French writer whose name I don't remember, saying "this book excites me."

Well, that book really didn't excite me. But this one sure did. I can't describe this book very well, except to say it had the same effect on me reading "The Gambler" by Dostoevsky did - that is to say, up late at night, racing to the end, desperate to see what happens next. Frank Mansfield will not say another word until he is the greatest cockfighter in the South, and is recognized as such, and he will sacrifice everything to make it happen.

What a great, engrossing book. Also, you'll learn a lot about cockfighting.

If I hadn't gleefully abandoned all scholarly pursuits some years ago, I'd be pretty tempted to become the preeminent Willeford scholar. My all time favorite literary pattern is the hero's journey (up top, Joseph C) and Cockfighter is more-or-less Willeford's spin on The Odyssey. And I don't think he was necessarily being shy about it. I mean, come on, there's a chicken named Icarus. (Also, there's a chicken called Little David that I'm preeeeeeeeetty sure was the inspiration for Little Jerry.) (Edited to add: Yes, Chris, I know Icarus is not in the Odyssey but, you know, mythology and stuff.)

The plot structure to this book is more traditional than those in his other books that I've read so far. There's a man with a goal who sets out on a quest, and unlike Hoke--who gets sidetracked often--Frank Mansfield sticks with his boon of becoming Cockfighter of the Year. This is what drives him, and he doesn't get distracted; every move he makes is done with the goal of winning that title. Like in every good hero's journey there is plenty along the way meant to mislead and tempt him away from his mission, but he isn't swayed for long. Maybe because I've read some of Willeford's other books where characters are more reactionary and the plot jumps according to their whims, but the ending of this almost caught me off guard because it's sort of exactly what you see coming. But it's still pretty awesome.

It took me a little longer to get into this book--I think mostly I had to warm up to Frank (hard to replace Hoke in my heart)--but once I got about 100 pages in, I couldn't put it down.

RitToC 31 -

Maybe the best book I’ve read in quarantine so far. Frank is a mute cockfighting enthusiast who will use anything and anyone to get a chance to compete for the biggest honor in cockfighting - a silver medal at the cockfighting championship in Milledgeville GA.

Much like Fight Club or The Wolf of Wall Street this is a subtle condemnation of hyper masculinity - Frank is an amoral monster who doesn’t notice the damage he causes to everyone around him, not to mention the mutilation and death of all the chickens he raises. Women only exist to work for him or sex. He ruins lives for what even he acknowledges is a pretty worthless medal.

It’s dark, it’s twisted, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Wonderful book.

Hace un año más o menos me terminé el “Conde de Montecristo” y desde entonces buscaba un libro parecido: uno de esos que "te cambian la vida". “Cockfigther” es lo más parecido que he encontrado.
El protagonista se parece a Edmundo Dantés en su determinación, moral recta, inteligencia, etcétera, pero también tiene ese poco de personaje canalla tipo Jim Thompson (como el alcalde de Nick Corey de "1280 almas"; no en vano, entre las recomendaciones de Goodreads) que lo hace más cercano y creíble.
Igual porque el protagonista y yo tenemos la misma edad; o porque nos unen algunas circunstancias y defectos, me ha hecho empatizar con Manfield en mucho. Sobre todo, por su enorme integridad dentro lo inmoral de sus acciones. Y es que…, menudo hombre. Las escenas con la guitarra, la relación con el hermano pequeño, su relación con sus distintos aliados o némesis gallistas, las mujeres. No creo que dé con personajes muchos mejores este año.

Gruesome and lurid like a dime novel should be, and decidedly NOT chick lit—unless your're a girl MS-13 member.

While Cockfighter chronicles a dwindling (for the better) sport, Willeford, of course, keeps us off balance and makes it fun.

Fascinating and unique, pure Willeford, with a hint of Jim Thompson about things. How often can you tell people that you are reading a first person narrative of a voluntarily mute cockfighter? It's incredibly well written, and never what I anticipated. Frank Mansfield is an arsehole, one hundred percent, almost Reacher-esque in his sad white man wish fulfilment nature, always right, always better than anyone else he comes in contact with, and complete with Sam Allardyce levels of hubris that I felt sure this would be an unreliable narrator who gets his comeuppence come the final chapter. And yet he is such a good window in to this entirely alien world and lifestyle, and me with my own collection of hens too. I've seen the Warren Oates movie thanks to some fine fellow on this website sending me a copy but I can't remember much of this book being in it. Both are highly enjoyable entertainment in their own right however.

This novel is a rancid slice of male chauvinism, a stodgy and relentlessly dour examination of a mute cockfighter's pursuit of glory that is as pathetic as it is tedious.

Even at 200 pages, this novel is exhausting. This is labeled as crime fiction, but it's more of a character study-and not an interesting one. Willeford employs his incredibly stiff, aphoristic register to constantly wax poetic about the real meaning of life as a man, mannn, how women wouldn't understand the glory of animal abuse, duuuude, how women need to cook for men to have purpose, broooo, how this 15-year-old girl is a good lay but I need to abandon her because she won't shut up, mannn, how this stupid woman thinks she knows art but only men know about Beethoven, duuuude. Disgusting, pretentious claptrap that is nauseating and boring in equal measure.

This shit is for the birds. Pun intended.