C()RRESP()M)I:N( 1. ~fnLetter from New York: The Merit and The Glorynby Thomas MolnarnIhe Manhattan intelligentsia foundnits literary Fidel Castro when GabrielnGarcia Marquez was awarded the NobelnPrize. The New York critics noted withnunconcealed satisfaction that in GarcianMarquez they have a giant of the novelnandz friend of Fidel and AUende. It apparentlynthrills them that this prize recipientnis far more likely to use his $150,000nfor the founding of still another revolutionarynmagazine rather than for thenstarving children of Cambodia. Yes,ngreat is the jubilation: not only did GarcianMarquez receive the Prize, but oncenagain Jorge Luis Borges didnotitztxsit it.nThat undeserving scribbler had thentemerity once to refer to Argentinengenerals as “gentlemen.”nThe Swedish Academy justified thenaward of the Nobel Prize for literature tonGabriel Garcia Marqiiez saying that hisnstories and novels “combine the real andnthe fantastic” and that “the poetic worldnhe calls to life reflects the continent’snconflict.” Well, yes and no. Only in theneyes of its intellectual minority is SouthnAmerica a land of particular violencen(which is always by latifundistas againstnsubdued peasants). These intellectuals,nmost of them novelists and moviemakers,nare the nth generation taking itsncues from Europe’s leftists, particularlynFrench, Spanish, and Italian; suchnmodels enable them to transplant Marxismninto South American forests andnmountains, where it has found a newnmilieu and shaped a new type on thenborders of reality and literature: thenguerrillero. Indeed, Garcia Marquez hasnbeen described as a “guerrillero of letters,”nand even his bushy eyebrows havenbeen celebrated as “rebellious.”nMost of these literary guerrilleros arencautious enough to wage their wars fromnMexico, New York, or the cafes of Paris.nProfessor Molnar teaches at BrooklynnCollege.nJulio Cortazar has become a citizen ofnMitterrandia (no wonder his novels readnlike copies of Sartre, minus the talent).nOthers, Vargas Llosa or the BraziliannMachado, commute between theirnnative country, Europe, and the U.S.,neverywhere enjoying a reputation fornboth macho exoticism