Travis Holland's first novel, "The Archivist's Story," concerns the fate of one of these writers, the Russian-Jewish short-story master Isaac Babel, author of the inimitable Red Cavalry tales, which were set among the Cossack units of the Red Army fighting in Poland in 1920.
(Two admirable exceptions: Mark Maxwell's delightful "Nixoncarver," a story of our 37th president as though written by the short-story master; and Philip Roth's parody "Our Gang").
The 29th-story master bedroom has sweeping views of the city and cashmere-covered walls, and the sheets will be monogrammed with your initials.
Sands Point to the east, the tip of Kings Point to the west and Westchester north across the Long Island Sound are visible from the dining room, a worn-looking screened porch, and a balcony off the second-story master bedroom.
The couple had bought a 1930s Mediterranean-style home in the Potrero Hill neighborhood here for $1 million in 2002, and had already spent $500,000 adding on a third-story master suite to take advantage of the area's famously close-up, dead-on views of downtown.
Asked to name their influences, they mentioned such staples of popular entertainment as the Marx Brothers, Burns and Allen and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" -- but also the playwrights Strindberg and William Inge, the short-story master Raymond Carver and, most frequently, Chekhov, whom Ms. Holzman described as the "god of the subtle gesture that reveals the entire life".
As a short-story master, Miss Welty is often mentioned by critics in the same breath as Chekhov, but she was dismissed early in her career as a regionalist and did not earn widespread critical respect until she was no longer young.
The point of entry and exit was determined to be glass doors in the second-story master bedroom.
Hijuelos attended Bronx Community College and City College of New York, where he was mentored by a number of seasoned writers, including short story master Donald Barthelme.
The short-story master returns with a collection set mostly in the Pine Tree State and featuring a sarcastic, world-weary teenager named Jocelyn.
