After Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s passing last Thursday, the New Yorker opened its archives to those compelled to get their hands on something from the “voice of Latin America.” One of the more interesting pieces in the archive is “The Challenge,” in which Marquez recalls a forty-two day span during which his first two short stories were published. Marquez was 20 and broke—so broke that he didn’t have the five centavos to purchase the paper in which his first story was printed. It’s natural to celebrate Marquez’s massive and indelible achievements as a writer, but it’s especially poignant to read about how it all started.
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