Paradise

An acclaimed postmodern fictionist (though deceased for a time now), 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. Here, Simon, a middle-aged architect separated from his wife, is given the chance to live out a steretypical male fantasy: freed from the travails of married life, three nubile lingerie models move into his apartment and use him as a sexual object. Convinced that satisfaction is only the first step toward disappointment, Simon worries that "his women" will move on, that his state of grace will come to an end, and that he will be inevitably left alone in his apartment to wither away.