SOURCE: Trussler, Michael. “Literary Artifacts: Ekphrasis in the Short Fiction of Donald Barthelme, Salman Rushdie, and John Edgar Wideman.” Contemporary Literature 41, no. 2 (summer 2000): 252-90.

In the following essay, Trussler draws parallels between the ekphrastic elements of Donald Barthelme's “The Balloon,” Salman Rushdie's “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” and Wideman's “What He Saw.”

Have you noticed, my boy, that the painting here is based on Homer, or have you failed to do so because you are lost in wonder as to how in the world the fire could live in the midst of the water? Well then, let us try to get at the meaning of it. Turn your eyes away from the painting itself so as to look only at the events on which it is based.

—Philostratus, Imagines

Visually oriented arts frequently express a longing for literature's differentiating capacities. Genre painting looks to its exploration...