SOURCE: Schaub, Danielle. “Text and Image: Overhead in a Balloon.” In Mavis Gallant, pp. 119-39. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.

In the following essay, Schaub offers a thematic and stylistic overview of the stories in Overheard in a Balloon, emphasizing the way the stories explore the “interaction between text and image.”

Overhead in a Balloon, Gallant's collection of Parisian stories, explores the mentality of her adoptive fellow citizens in the late seventies and early eighties with the sharpness of the best introduced social critic. From an insider's perspective, Gallant exposes the pettiness and superficiality of the artistic and literary world (patrons and creators alike) as well as of the petite bourgeoisie, the upper-middle class, and the impoverished aristocrats. Several of the stories are linked by the recurrence of certain characters: “Speck's Idea” and “Overhead in a Balloon” both stage Sandor Speck, the curator of an art gallery, and his...