Bull Fever

Bull Fever is Kenneth Tynan's first-hand profile of bullfighting. Tynan is too awestruck to be a reliable observer, but he still writes great lines:

At the climax of a good faena, you know exactly how a man looks and behaves and, with cognate clarity, something of what he feels and thinks in the presence of death. An actor might play Cyrano better for having seen Cagancho in the ring, alternating comic high jinks with tragic pride; and anyone contemplating Mio in Maxwell Anderson's 'Winterset' and wondering how to cope with the death-shrouded last act would be well-advised to watch Litri face a Murube bull. When you have seen that, you know a little more about dying.