El mejor libro sobre peleas de gallos que leí nunca.

Muy entretenido, sólo elegidos como Willeford son capaces de escribir algo que me parezca interesante sobre el tema.

An original story and a stand up main character. You will also learn everything you have to know about cock fighting.

Well-written, gripping, and adapted into a superb Monte Hellman film in '74. Simpler than you might think.

Cockfighter is the third Willeford I've read, and the common denominator among them, beyond their dark and subversive bent, are protagonists who lead their lives with absolute confidence and certainty, even if those lives may be wicked. The narrator, "Silent" Frank Mansfield, believes wholeheartedly in the dignified tradition of cockfighting, despite the practice being illegal in 49 states and leading him to constant personal and economic ruin. Willeford reveals this underground culture in punishing, almost fetishistic detail, with long passages describing the action in the pits and harrowing glimpses into Frank's training methods and gambits to increase his odds. Frank refuses to break from his chosen path: His commitment to winning The Cockfighter of the Year medal is so single-minded that he takes a personal vow of silence until he reaches his goal, causing him years of hardship and souring his relationships. The reader might find him narrow, disturbed, even psychotic, but Willeford plays it straight to the gloriously hard-bitten end.

It’s been a long time since I discovered an author I hated and admired in equal measure. Willeford is an evil genius, and a hilarious one at that.

Fast, sure, with Ocala dirt under its cracked, yellowed fingernails ... whatever you think of the milieu, it feels "lived-in," with vivid, genuine, expertly drawn characters.

The Moby Dick of cockfighting

My real rating is 3.5.

I remember liking Miami Blues years ago, and I knew that Willeford adapted this novel into a notable Seventies movie starring Warren Oates, so that's why I justified giving it a try. I was only a few pages into it when the misogyny, pederasty, and animal cruelty stopped me dead in my tracks. I don't need this.

#19 from willeford for me.

update, finished, 12 sep 13, thursday evening, 10:17 p.m.

so i'm reading along, right, enjoying the story, considering my response here...my take. and willeford hits you right between the eyes. if you are one of those who are so focking tired of the fashionable ideology, willeford hits you right square between the eyes right at the end of this, and bang! this is a favorite. if you are so focking tired of the fashionable focking elite dictating to you this that the other focking thing, here, read this. may it do ya fine.

and...i realize that there are some who think anything you, the gentle reader, say about a story is a dreaded spoiler.

consider this: did i read some place here that some consider this "autobiographical"? yes. i think i read that. this is fiction. meh, an aside.

but gawd-almighty i love it when mary elizabeth calls frank mansfield a hateful man, you hate everything, yourself, me, the world, everybody! and that praise jesus now and forevermore is part and parcel of the fashionable ideology that pisses me off no end. mary elizabeth does not have a clue, she has chosen to not have a clue and she has elected and voiced that opinion about frank mansfield, her fiancee, there at the end and if that does not echo our world, my world, then nothing does.

fact. there are some that do not have a clue. but they have chosen, now and forevermore, to have an opinion about that which they have no clue about. and they have elected to give voice to that choice and have made it so. frank? he's headed to puerto rico with bernice. heh!

ha ha ha ha ha! gawd i love it.

what's amazing about this story is that frank mansfield does not have a voice. he has chosen to remain silent, this vow he has taken upon himself, and he has chosen not to speak. heh! yeah, tommyknockers aren't much into metaphor, either! imagine writing this, you got your main character, he isn't going to say word one throughout. obstacles? you think!

index later, gator.

a dedication
for mary jo

a quote on a white page:
what matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
--ezra pound


time place scene setting
*belle glade, florida, a trailer rented by the eye-narrator, scene opener, captain mack's trailer camp
*frank's mobile love-lee-mobile home
*his old caddy
*various cock-fighting pits around the south, furthest north in tennessee, furthest west...in louisiana maybe...or alabama/mississippi. georgia, florida
*various bus stations...hotels...restaurants
*judge brantley powell's house
*mansfield, georgia, a farm there
*a purina feed store
*various farms throughout the south
*sealbach hotel, milledgeville, georgia

characters
*eye-narrator, frank mansfield, cockfighter, 32-yr-old, has a farm in or near ocala, florida. there is also a section that describes how frank purchased a guitar from an uncle and taught himself to play, how he developed his own unique style of play
*dody white, a 16-yr-old living w/frank at opener...later, she winds up (on a bet) w/another man, jack burke...and they got married
*ed middleton, cockfighter, early 60s, wife wants him to quot cockfighting, sell his cocks, etc
*martha middleton, his wife
*jack burke, cockfighter
*accordion-necked fruit tramp
*little david, cock of jack burke
*dody's parents...she is 1 of 5 children
*an old-timer collecting an entrance fee
*captain mack...florida trooper...a pretty woman sat on the front seat
*a couple of dade county financiers
*a scattering of belle glade townspeople
*2 gamblers from miami
*ralph hansen, one of 2 of burke's handlers
*a machinist in valdosta
*the other handler was in the truck bed
*doc riordan, dr. onyx p. riordan...maker of licarbo, a kind of antacid
*younger brother, randall...frank's younger brother
*mary elizabeth gaylord, frank's almost wife, 29-yr-old, wants frank to marry her...they've been doing it for years at this swim spot called the place. she is a teacher of english. she lives on a farm with her brother, wright gaylord and his wife
*senator jacob foxhall...a man instrumental in promoting cockfighting...was a state senator
*icarus...name of a special cock that frank buys from ed middleton
*judge brantley powell/old lawyer
*wright gaylord, frank's fiancee's brother...married to
*francis shelby, a dentist's daughter from macon
*old dusty, a dog frank had
*omar baradinsky, frank's neighbor in ocala, florida...a former big wig lawyer type from new york city...still married to a woman who visits one week a year, conjugal type visits...and omar has been trying to break into the cock-fighting culture. he can't, though. he teams up w/frank. or wait now. he was an advertising guy. big bucks.
*ducky winters, manager of the purina feed store
*virgil dietch,
*pete chocolate
*bandy taylor
*dirty jacques boniin, biloxi
*milan peeples, son tom...and there's an impormptu cockfight at the man's farm, the floor slick from paint or something i forget exactly
*fred reed
*john mccoy and colonel bob moore...texas
*buddy waggoner
*peach owen
*sol p. mccall, originated the modern tournament
*tom doyle
*a host of other minor, window-dressing characters. ..like "various farmers"... and "a carload of arsenal employees"..."a georgia highway patrolman"
*leroy and mary bondwell...who look after omar
*tex higdon, reporter for american gamefowl quarterly
*baldy allen, columbus georgia
*johnny norris, roy whipple, chattanooga
*charley smith, negro tenant
*his wife, aunt leona
*the james boys...a band that headlines where frank gets a temp job playing the three songs he knows...tiny james, the bass player
*aimee, our negro cook in the kitchen
*bernice and tommy hungerford...frank takes up w/bernice...a well-to-do woman...at the end after mary elizabeth gives him the shaft

*

a quote or two
if a man accepts life logically, the unexpected is actually the expected.

some americana/folklore that is repeated in other willeford stories
he couldn't have caught a pig in a trench

Un primer capítulo inolvidable, con la tensión de las grandes obras. Pocas novelas arrancan con un clímax tan acabado. Recomendadísima.

Charles Willeford's villains are tough, self-assured and manly men who are convinced about their own uniqueness. They also have a sneering contempt for ordinary life and people who in their opinion are ordinary.

Here is Frederick.J Fenger, Jr reacting to his newly acquired girlfriend's ambition to buy a Burger King franchise in Miami Blues - "I can't see any point to hanging around a Burger King all day, no matter how much money you make. .... I'll tell you why. Your life would depend on the random desires of people who wanted a hamburger. So you can just forget about Burger King".

Or Troy Louden in Sideswipe - "Smoking comforts ordinary men, but I'm not an ordinary man. There aren't many like me left. And it's a good thing for the world that there isn't. There'll always be a few of us in America in every generation. Because only a great country like America can produce men like me. I'm not a thinker, I'm a doer."

Here is Frank Mansfield in Cockfighter - "It is a funny thing. A man can make a promise to his God, break it five minutes later and never think about it. With an idle shrug of his shoulders, a man can break solemn promises to his mother, wife or sweetheart, and, except for a slight momentary twinge of conscience, he still won't be bothered very much. But if a man ever breaks a promise to himself he disintegrates. His entire personality and character crumble into tiny pieces, and he is never the same man again.
I remember very well a sergeant I knew in the army. Before a group of five men he swore off smoking forever. An hour later he sheepishly lit a cigarette and broke his vow to the five of us and to himself. He was never quite the same man again, not to me, and not to himself."

Frank Mansfield is the main character in Cockfighter. But he is almost like a villain, tough as an axe, contemptuous of women, intensely judgmental of his fellow men - basically a man who would not take a backward step to anyone or anything. The novel is his internal soliloquy after he takes a vow of silence in a year where he aims at winning the "Cockfighter of the Year" award.

There are vivid and violent descriptions of cockfighting matches and the effort that goes into training cocks. It is almost like a bible or even a documentary for/about cock fighters. As usual, Willeford goes into minor details of monetary transactions and how much the main character spends. Money is an obsession for nearly all the characters in Willeford novels and the ones in Cockfighter are no different. As Willeford wrote in Honey Gal - "Money is the root of all goodness. To talk disparagingly about money is the privilege of those who have money. There are also those people who state matter-of-factly that "money isn't everything". This statement is also true, but only so long as one has money." I almost gave this novel a 5, it is one of the best books I've read all year. But at times, the vow of silence taken by Mansfield is a bit hard to digest. Why would people put up with his silence? How did they simply accept that he had lost his voice? It almost makes the character a bit clownish. Maybe that was the author's intention.