Read enough Robert E. Howard and you start to see him everywhere, particularly in the works of his contemporaries. Case in point: I recently listened to an audio version of Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction treatise on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon, and my Howard-addled brain began to piece together tenuous, but perhaps not entirely unfounded, connections between the disparate authors.

Hemingway and Howard are alike? Didn’t one write about traumatized and/or impotent war veterans named Nick and Jake, and the other about unstoppable, larger-than-life heroes from impossibly ancient times with names like Conan and Kull? I’ll admit that if the only Hemingway you’ve read is The Garden of Eden or A Moveable Feast, you’ll find little in common with these tales and Howard’s Hour of the Dragon or “The Vale of Lost Women.” But Death in the Afternoon is a very different animal than Hemingway’s softer stories. It’s a raw, unflinching look at a sport many consider barbaric and cruel, but which Hemingway admired very deeply. And then it struck me: What is Death in the Afternoon if not heroic fantasy? What are the Spanish bullfighters of Hemingway’s work if not modern-day gladiators, heroes with swords? Wealth, fame, and great heights are theirs for the taking, but are entirely dependent on their bravery, grace, and skill with cape and sword.

Could Howard have derived some inspiration from Death in the Afternoon and/or Hemingway’s stories in general? We know Howard read Hemingway. According to the REH Bookshelf, an invaluable resource painstakingly compiled by Howard scholar Rusty Burke, Howard had a copy of “Winner Take Nothing” on his bookshelf. This collection contains “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “A Natural History of the Dead” (this latter must-read vignette also appears in Death in the Afternoon), among other short stories. Given his prodigious appetite as a reader Howard may very well have read Death in the Afternoon. Although he didn’t have it on his bookshelf at the time of his death, Howard’s sensibilities are splashed on its pages like the blood of a soft, city-bred Nemedian on a Pictish axe.

While Death in the Afternoon may not bear the aspect of swords and sorcery, if you swap out Madrid and muletas for Aquilonia and broadswords, the lines between the two authors become quite blurred. Death in the Afternoon tells the stories of men — some brave, some cowardly, others just doing a job — who deal in death and place their lives on the line for the wages of blood. With their athletic grace and killer’s eyes, they are very much like Howard’s prize-fighters and treasure-seeking swordsmen.

The same year that Weird Tales brought Conan to a wider public (1932) Hemingway published his famous theory of courage in Death in the Afternoon. True courage, Hemingway writes, is the grace and calm stillness of the bullfighter in the face of a raging animal that wants only to toss, gore, and trample him into the earth. Writes Hemingway: “. . .the usual bullfighter is a very brave man, the most common degree of bravery being the ability temporarily to ignore possible consequences.”

Hemingway’s blunt yet honest definition of bravery echoes throughout Howard’s tales. One example can be found in Howard’s famous short story “Red Nails,” which includes a scene in which Valeria and Conan are chased up a rock outcropping by a dragon. The reactions of the two heroes are strikingly different: Valeria is consumed by panic and cannot think straight, this fierce pirate who had “proved her courage a thousand times in wild battles on sea and land, on the blood-slippery decks of burning war-ships, in the storming of walled cities.” In contrast, Conan is calm and collected in the same situation, exhibiting cool indifference in the face of the murderous, animal rage of the monster.

“He was a barbarian, and the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children was as much a part of him as his lusts and rages. He could endure a situation like this with a coolness impossible to a civilized person,” writes Howard. Conan eventually devises a clever plan to poison the creature and affect their escape.

Like a prize bullfighter, Conan is able to prevail because he does not feel fear; he faces death coolly and at times with a grim smile, relishing the opportunity to resolve problems with honest steel. When fear does prickle his spine (as it does occasionally in the presence of magic and supernatural monsters), he does not flee, but meets it headlong, trusting in his skill and instincts. “There’s nothing in the universe cold steel won’t cut,” says Conan in “Beyond the Black River.” “I’m not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn’t step out of my path to let one go by.”

Again, compare Conan’s theory of courage with Hemingway’s: “A more pronounced degree of bravery, which comes with exhilaration, is the ability not to give a damn for possible consequences; not only to ignore them but to despise them.”

Hemingway tells us that the most successful bullfighters are ones who learn best their fear. The great killers are those that face the deadly animal head on, lean in over the deadly horns, and drive in their sword to the hilt. It is the man who fights with fear or turns and flees who is typically gored, not he who fights with clarity and takes calculated risks. “There is always something the matador can do if he keeps his nerve. He may sweat ink, but there is a way to fight each bull no matter how difficult,” writes Hemingway.

I think Howard would have greatly respected that opinion.

Even for those who object to the principle of bull-fighting, Death in the Afternoon is worth reading for Hemingway’s observations on life, writing, wine, and a number of other fine topics. Sword and sorcery fans fed up with the multi-book, lofty-language, high fantasy series glutting the shelves of bookstores would certainly appreciate this Hemingway-ism: “. . . nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.”

And this:

“People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time.”

Hemingway’s observation about creating people instead of cardboard characters reminds me of Howard’s famous letter to Clark Ashton Smith recounting his experience creating Conan: “[He] is simply a combination of a number of men I have known, and I think that’s why he seemed to step full-grown into my consciousness when I wrote the first yarn of the series. Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.”

Assimilated experience, indeed. Conan was created from a combination of Howard’s experiences and the complex, personal fires burning within his own heart. While many are quick to credit the films and the Lancers for Conan’s lasting appeal, perhaps Hemingway’s observation is a better explanation for why Howard’s most famous creation shows no sign of fading from the public consciousness.