What Do Stories about Pictures Want?

Reading a story or looking at a picture not only responds to what people seem to desire, but also fills in a want or lack in both. Reading or looking, in each case, seems to complete a purpose that is not so much that of the writer or painter as a need intrinsic to the works themselves. It is a desire somehow built into the works' material substance. One additional demand stories and pictures make on many readers and viewers is a call for language describing the effect of the picture or of the text. Here, Miller shares his views on several stories about pictures that lead to extravagant definition of what it means to leave the real world and enter a fictional one.