4.1 Stars
Milton

A good book about the masculine urge to be a cruel shit-heel and the laundering of selfish violence through ritual.

Cockfighter is totally disgusting, and yet completely fascinating.

4,5 / 5

I was pleasantly surprised by how thoroughly entertained I was while delving into the captivating tale of a silent cock fighter relentlessly pursuing the coveted "Cock Fighter of the Year" award. This unique narrative kept me hooked from start to finish, defying my initial expectations.

This was an interesting read. Not really crime or hard-boiled but stylistically connected to these. The hook is what keeps the reader engaged: cockfighting. This was a 'sport' in America and elsewhere in which two roosters fight in a pit and men make bets on the outcome.

The sociological aspect of the book maintains the reader's interest.

Recommended for those interested in the sport of cockfighting and a time in American history that has, for the most part, passed.

Rating 4 out of 5 stars. A good read: well plotted, written, and with solid characterizations. Willeford is a writing has, unfortunately, passed from the public's consciousness. Time to read him again.

This novel is written well and features a protagonist who doesn't speak (and I don't recall it being due to anything physical but mostly emotional). Like the title says, it's about cockfighting that may not appeal to many but this book was hard to put down when first read. I've read other Charles Willeford novels like Miami Blues which was very good and the first in a series featuring Hoke Moseley, a middle-aged detective with personal issues (and I need to get back to reading them).

Maybe it should be said that I think cockfighting is a terrifying practice. I won't say "sport" because I don't think it is one. It's like hunting or NASCAR, a competition, one in which the natural instincts of an animal are conditioned, trained, and exploited. It all ends in death, but doesn't it anyway?

There are only a few scenes of cockfighting in the book, mostly at the beginning and the end. Willeford's history as a sportswriter serves him well in these passages. There's beautiful choreography and action during the fights, and vivid description that transcends the repellent nature of the scene. The scenes of Mansfield testing to see if some of his newly acquired cocks is game is the most gruesome in the book, and it puts to rest any notion one might have that maybe this cockfighting stuff isn't so bad.

The main character, Frank Mansfield, is strange and wonderful, admirable and awful. We learn he's taken an almost three year vow of silence, one he won't break until he wins the coveted Cockfighter of the Year award. It's a neat trick Willeford pulls off, making his main character silent and writing in the first person. Fucking brilliant, even.

This book is wonderful, funny and ugly without ever being crass or exploitative. Mansfield defends cockfighting, of course, but that's not really what it's about anyway. Willeford loosely modeled the novel on the Odyssey, and that sense of longing and striving permeates the book. So does the word "cock", as one might imagine.

Here are some jokes:
I haven't seen this many cocks on paper since last month's Playgirl.

Two cockfighters are standing in the pit. One holds a large Rhode Island Red, the other is empty handed. The one with the Red says, "Where's you're chicken?" and the other says, "Chicken?"

How to you check a pistol for a hernia? Turn its lead and cock.

My familiarity with Charles Willeford was limited to his most famous book, Miami Blues, and two of its sequels (still haven’t read the third), which follow the down and out detective, Hoke Mosely. Mosely is a flawed, at times ethically dubious character, but he makes his living upholding law and order, catching the bad guys. The titular cockfighter of this book, Frank Mansfield, is much closer to the criminal sociopaths that Hoke Mosley encounters, Junior from Miami Blues and Troy from Sideswipe, but that doesn’t keep you from rooting for Frank as he sets out on his compelling quest (the plot structure based loosely on The Odyssey) to become Cockfighter of the Year.

Willeford is known as a master of the crime genre, but this feels more like a meticulous piece of sports journalism than a noir caper or confessional. Cockfighting was, and still is, illegal, an industry of the underworld that was tolerated in the South, even aided and abetted by both elected officials and law enforcement. There’s a lot to learn about the sport and culture of cockfighting from this book, but it’s also a very detailed cross-section of the contradictions of Southern culture.

Cockfighting is cruel and brutal, and Willeford’s depictions of the matches, or “hacks”, are vivid and gory. But Willeford, a former horse trainer, shows the other side of cockfighting, the discipline and science behind training and raising a champion. While Frank appears to have very little love or compassion for his birds, he does respect and at times almost admires them, believing that cockfighting is “the only sport that can’t be fixed”, and "it's a crime not to arm a cock with spurs that will allow him to fight his best."

Sworn to a self-imposed vow of silence until he achieves his goal, Frank sees himself as a man of character and honor, but he’s not without his shortcomings, most evident in his personal relationships. To Frank, and probably the author, women are primarily an impediment or distraction. Frank’s mentor, Ed Middleton, was forced to retire from cockfighting by his wife, who eventually dies, freeing Ed to return to refereeing the sport he loves. Early in the book, Frank attempts a brief career as a musician while trying to scrape together enough money to buy Ed’s ace cock, which he’s reluctantly agreed to sell. This leads to Frank’s tryst with a wealthy widow, Bernice, whom he eventually spurns like Odysseus averting the Sirens. When Frank returns home to evict his brother and sell his family farm, his fiance pleads with him to give up cockfighting and marry her. Frank walks out on her, but later, through correspondence, issues her an ultimatum. He invites her to the big tournament to watch him compete, convinced she’ll realize the beauty and honor of the sport she deems barbaric. Only then will he marry her. If he looses, he’ll give up cockfighting and settle down. If he wins, she has to accept his chosen career. Otherwise, he’ll never speak to her again. Frank also invites Bernice to the tournament, as if he’s hedging his bets with women the same way he keeps a steady rotation of fowl, leaving the reader to wonder if he has any more respect or empathy for his lovers than he does for his birds. Maybe less.

This isn’t a muck-racking expose on animal cruelty—Willeford is no Upton Sinclair—but the book is exciting, informative, and at times very funny, although there isn’t much in the way of character development. Even though the point of view is Frank’s, first-person, it’s clear that he’s self-centered and indifferent to the suffering of others. Frank succeeds despite, and maybe even because of his own personal flaws, changing very little over the course of the book, other than maybe learning to be more cautious and wary of the trappings of hubris. His ace cock, after all, is named Icarus.

Truly evil, a monument to the sociopathy at the heart of the american spirit...



But also cool as hell

Willeford l'ho conosciuto per la serie di Hoke Moseley e mi sono deciso a leggere qualcosa di diverso...niente da fare, l'autore ha stupito ancora una volta...
La scrittura è fluida come al solito i personaggi (talvolta folkloristici)sono tratteggiati con puntiglio, come la descrizione degli ambienti e dei paesaggi (ci sono alcuni passaggi addirittura poetici per uno scrittore noir).
Insomma, promosso, anche questa volta, a pieni voti!!!
Uno scrittore che si sta riscoprendo adesso negli stati uniti, ma meglio tardi che mai, valorizzarlo come meritava.

Vaya joya!

(4.5) As an avid reader, the quality I look for in books is a story. Yes, craftsmanship is important. So is characterization. But it's the story that draws me. Can you tell me a tale that will get me hooked? Especially if it's on a subject I don't care much about?

I've never given more than a second thought to cockfighting, which is barely a sport and rightfully illegal. But Charles Willeford's story of one man's pursuit of victory and navigating the culture of of the southeastern United States to get there is an incredible tale. Willeford has a skill of covering the technical without getting bogged down by detail. His prose is sparse yet concise, just the way I like it. And there's even some random humor sprinkled in. I didn't care much for the B-plot but Willeford rightly spares few pages on it anyway. He knows what the main idea is.

On my cover of Cockfighter Elmore Leonard, one of my all-time favorites, is quoted as saying "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford." Considering such high praise from the master of crime fiction, I'm prepared to go through the man's catalog to see if Leonard is right.