[In Ellis Island Mark Helprin] offers 11 stories that reside in no insistent place or time. The first is set in a mythical Alpine village, the last in a farcical New York; and others hover lightly over the Persian Gulf, Long Island, Israel, Vermont, the Charles River, Italy and London. Times range from the turn of the century to the present. Such an ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction since Poe.

And Poe, the most theatrical of writers, may be a guide to the nature of Mr. Helprin's ambition; for while Mr. Helprin's settings are meticulously tended for verisimilitude, they remain on a peculiarly separate plane from his actors….

Mark Helprin 1947– Photograph © 1981 by Jill Krementz

In the concluding novella, "Ellis Island," a resourceful immigrant (a kind of talking Harpo Marx) triumphs over an equally fantastic gentile and Hasidic New York by persisting in his own...