In the 1960s, when cockfighting was still legal in the United States, Charles Willeford (Little Rock, Arkansas, 1919 – Miami, Florida, 1988)—a writer whose literature consistently exposed the harsher side of society—set his novel Cockfighter (1962). The story introduces Frank Mansfield, a 33-year-old man traveling across South Florida in his trailer, portraying a rural, redneck territory typical of the country’s interior, reminiscent of the settings found in Richard Ford or Cormac McCarthy’s works.
This depiction contrasts sharply with Florida’s usual urban or coastal narratives——like the ones Willeford himself often set in all his other novels. At the outset, Mansfield is accompanied by Dody, a minor who serves only to meet his sexual needs and cook for him. However, after an early defeat in Belle Glade, Mansfield loses everything, including his trailer, and abandons Dody. At this point, he decides to feign the mute condition he maintains throughout the rest of the novel.
Thus begins his descent into a hellish odyssey through Orlando, Ocala, Jacksonville, Alabama, and Georgia. Along the way, he encounters seedy bars, whiskey, sex, and fistfights, exposing the misogyny and animal cruelty pervasive in Anglo-American culture. Mansfield’s goal is to earn enough money to buy more gamecocks, continue competing, and win the coveted Southern Conference Tournament’s Cockfighter of the Year (STC) prize the narrator equates to the Nobel Prize for scientists.
By the late 1980s, three names stood out among true aficionados of noir fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Charles Willeford. Just a few years earlier, Willeford, a “cursed” writer under Miami’s palm trees, was largely ignored and dismissed until Miami Blues, a novel featuring detective Hoke Mosley, catapulted him to fame and secured coverage in major publications like Publishers Weekly and The New York Times.
Cockfighter is one of Willeford’s pre-noir novels, written during a time when his books were out of circulation and unavailable in bookstores—unattractive to publishers. It remains one of his few works that fall outside the noir genre, often regarded by readers and critics as his masterpiece and one of the “Greatest American Novels.” In fact, Willeford himself considered Cockfighter his most important book, often sending it to other writers when exchanging works to introduce himself.
In 1974, Willeford adapted Cockfighter into a screenplay, which was brought to the screen under the direction of Monte Hellman. The author himself appeared in the film, playing Ed Middleton, one of the cockfighting competitors surrounding Frank Mansfield.
