Paradise (American Literature Series) - Softcover

"There's nothing in art as dazzling, and bewildering, as a fully achieved style at its apex....Though superficially Paradise seems to be a modest little caprice, Barthelme strikes every note...and the cascade of consonances he pours out really does seem to offer too much beauty for a conventional 1987 sensibility to see the sense behind it."

Paradise is agile, witty and lightened by Barthelme's canny disassociations, and it is one of the blackest things he has written. --Richard Eder

Although Donald Barthelme has written 12 previous books of fiction containing some of the most innovative influential stories of our day reading Paradise is a shock and a revelation. --Elizabeth Jolley

There's nothing in art as dazzling and bewildering as a fully achieved style at its apex . . . Though superficially Paradise seems to be a modest little caprice, Barthelme strikes every note . . . and the cascade of consonances he pours out really does seem to offer too much beauty for a conventional 1987 sensibility to see the sense behind it. --Michael Feingold

"No other word for it: a charming book."--Peter S. Prescott, "Newsweek"

"No other word for it: a charming book."-Peter S. Prescott, "Newsweek"

Simon, a middle-aged architect separated from his wife, is given the chance to live out a stereotypical male fantasy: freed from the travails of married life, he ends up living with three nubile lingerie models who use him as a sexual object.

Set in the 1980s, there's a further tension between Simon's desire to exploit this stereotypical fantasy and his (as well as the author's) desire to treat the women as human beings, despite the women's claims that Simon can't distinguish between their personalities.

Employing a variety of forms, Barthelme gracefully plays with this setup, creating a story that's not just funny-although it's definitely that-but actually quite melancholy, as Simon knows that the women's departure is inevitable, that this "paradise" will come to an end, and that he'll be left with only an empty house, booze, and regrets about chances not taken.