Book Review: The Golden Cockerel is here identified as a novel (or, at 74 pages, a novella), but strongly resembles a screenplay turned into prose. It was most likely written around 1956-57. The film was released in 1964. The novella was originally published in 1980 as part of a collection in Spanish entitled El gallo de oro y otros textos para cine (The Golden Rooster and Other Texts for Cinema). The novella focuses on cockfighting at festivals in rural Mexico. An indigent, disabled man lucks into a magnificent fighting bird, and his fortunes change. A story of violence and love, wealth and poverty, freedom and fate. While Mexican to the bone, it's also a universal tale. The Golden Cockerel is much more straightforward, visual, and less experimental than Rulfo's other fiction. While a good, even engaging story, it doesn't reach the heights of the novel Pedro Paramo or the stories collected in The Plain in Flames. The remainder of the "writings" in this book are largely not completed works (there's also a number of typos and the translation, by Douglas J. Weatherford, seems inconsistent). While interesting for their moments of genius and reflections of Rulfo's novel, stories, and influence on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, they're mostly just bits and pieces of his work. They do provide much food for thought on Rulfo's thought processes and writing choices. Look for the reference to Gone with the Wind! Valuable, even essential, for Rulfo completists and scholars, these writings are not the best evidence of Rulfo's genius. Unfortunately, especially considering how little fiction he wrote, The Golden Cockerel cannot be rated as successful or important as his other work. [3½★]
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