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Ah, The Barthelme...Only a master such as this can take a book full of over-the-top sexuality and make it ring with sadness and also such great humor. D. Barthelme also has an ear for sentences like no one else--not my favorite book of his, but still floating well above a sea full of others striving for what he seems to easily accomplish.
Wow, this book is nutty. Don B must go into a white-wine-with-ice-cubes trance before he starts writing his novels on packages of cocktail napkins. How is it he puts his finger so deftly on the pressure point that we, the people, find so hard to find? The point that contains our national melancholy and creeping fear. The point of getting old, but not getting any wiser... just more nutty, and alittle dirty.
imo, one of the funniest books ever written. it's Basic Instinct but even better
While still a good book, this is my least favorite Barthelme so far by far. This is mainly due to a lack of characters who are not only likable but just genuinely interesting in the first place. Towards the end, I started to care for and invest in the characters a little more than I had previously and overall its second half was definitely an improvement over the first, although both have their good and bad qualities. Barthelme is too talented a writer to make a boring book even if it isn’t near...
This was Barthelme's thirteenth book. I get the impression that maybe I should have started with something a little more essential, but this was a quick, fun read.An aging architect named Simon is recently divorced from his wife. One night at a bar he catches the tail end of a lingerie show, and makes friendly with three models from Colorado. Without much explanation as to the why or how of it, Barthelme throws them all in Simon's large apartment in New York City, where they all share a rather q...
You'd think a book about a middle-aged architect cohabiting with a harem of three models would be Paradise itself, but in the end I was disappointed in the garden. I didn't much care for the dialogue, in fact, didn't really even care for the premise. I wasn't all that impressed with the writing either. It is a quick read, and it has some funnier moments, and it kind of represented some of the lifestyles engaged in during that era. Almost like he was having a midlife fantasy, and decided to write...
During my stint as book reviewer here at decomP, I've tried to limit my reviews to contemporary writings such as books published within the last 10 years. However, sometimes I find it necessary to visit a few older entries, and Donald Barthelme's Paradise (Dalkey Archive Press, 1986) is one novel that definitely warrants attention. Ever the prolific writer, Barthelme published several novels and collections during his lifespan, with this specific release arriving about three years before his dea...
In its way, this book is perfect. Funny and enjoyable.
"Barthelme's version of "paradise" is both a gentle satire of the cult of the midlife crisis and a meditation on the melancholy of fulfilled desire."Read in curiosity to see how Paradise might relate to Roth. A bit witty and not nearly as illicit as the description leads one to believe, but nothing much doing here.
Completely implausible and highly unlikely premise - or at least plausible only for an incredibly small subset of likely wealthy and white men over 50 - and certainly weird —. but also interesting and, best aspect - positively exudes NYC from the mid-1980’s vibe.
Took me to page 193 to finda Donald Barthelme -worthy line: "Wheat germ bubble gum was servedAt the Maniacs' Ball." Too long to wait.
In Paradise everyday is a Saturday
A gem of a satirical novel. Darkly funny but Barthelme portrays a keen sense of the human frailty, fragility, and temporality of desire and satisfaction. A novelization of anhedonia.
Really sketchy, really fragmented, really whack, really....Barthelme. It's fun, but it's also something you really have to be in the mood for. Like pinning monobrows on subway station advertising.
Amiable, playful, and down to earth (for Barthelme). There are typically darker, harder-hitting aspects to Barthelme’s stories, which hint at/point to flaw lines in personal/social constructs by using and calling attention to language drawn from clichés, tropes, and banalities of popular culture (where advertising is both cause and symptom). While this book does mock (imitate and gibe) popular sentiments of the mid-80s, it largely plays things straight when it tells the story of a 53-year-old ar...
DNF
The premise could convincingly be a malicious parody of Updike-- a well-off, middle-aged architect, tired of his failing marriage, takes a sabbatical to live alone in New York. There he encounters not one, but _three_ beautiful lingerie models in need of a place to live, so he offers to share his apartment with them. So begins this story, which could so easily be a myopic pity-study of a man's fall from the greatness of youth, but is saved by Barthelme's compassion and wit to become something mu...
Less brazen, more realistic, yet very episodic and dream like, Bathelme takes a swing at relationships between men and women and comes up with something surprisingly dull with occasional funny bits.
A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1987. A humorous middle age crisis novel with wit and pathos. A quick read for a change of pace from more epic masterpieces.
This is the first time I've been disappointed by Barthelme. :(
