He loved bullfighting
Anyone who has read the passages in "The Sun Also Rises" that discuss that peculiarly Latin sport should not be surprised by Mr. Hemingway's emergence as an authority on bullfighting. Even those who have never seen a matador may concede that he is an authority, based not only on Mr. Hemingway's statement that he has seen fifteen hundred bulls killed on the field of honor and his acknowledgment of indebtedness to some 2,077 "books and pamphlets in Spanish dealing with or touching on tauromania," but also on the internal evidence of the book itself. One could argue that Mr. Hemingway knows bullfighting at least as well as our own country's specialized sports writer knows baseball, football, racing, and fighting. He knows it so well that, on occasion, only the introduction of an unusual old lady as the author's interlocutor, a few digressions on death, modern literature, and sex life, combined with Mr. Hemingway's extremely masculine writing style, save the reader from drowning in a flood of technicalities.
One might wonder why Mr. Hemingway would infer in American readers a strong enough interest in bullfighting to buy and read a book of 517 pages on the subject. However, this would be putting the cart before the horse, or allowing the bull to wave a red cloth at the matador rather than vice versa. Bullfighting, it is assumed, became a hobby for Mr. Hemingway due to the light it casts on Spain, human nature, and life and death. In some ways, this is Ernest Hemingway's "Virgin Spain" book.
Hemingway didn't stop there; in 1932, he published a non-fiction book titled 'Death in the Afternoon.' The book is based on the awe-inspiring art of Spanish bullfighting and depicts a more introspective look at the true nature of fear and courage.
