SOURCE: "Living Arrangements: On Donald Barthelme's Paradise," in Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme, edited by Richard F. Patteson, G. K. Hall, 1992. pp. 208-16.

In the following essay, O'Donnell illustrates how Barthelme comments on various aspects of contemporary life and society in Paradise.

      Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
      The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
      Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
      The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
      A part of labor and a part of pain,
      And next in glory to enduring love,
      Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
                  —Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning"

Donald Barthelme's third novel. Paradise (1986), is, perhaps, his least-read and most disregarded work. Poorly received by many reviewers, it appears to be Barthelme's failed attempt to write in a more traditional novelistic mode. Even at that, its status as a novel remains questionable, as it...