Florentino Ariza, the flowery yet awkward, eloquent yet errant protagonist of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del colera), wants nothing more, growing up in his unnamed South American country, than to be a poet. What he becomes instead, to survive, is a businessman. Having steeped himself as a youth in Golden Age sonnets, Florentino grows up to understand that, in real life, nothing could be more desirable and helpful than to be able to write a good business letter, an ability as it turns out much further beyond Florentino s reach than winning the local sonnet-writing contest decided by oral performance in the town square.