0 .0 B0 OKS A Lost Tourist in Paradise Simon's young models provide all the sexual pleasure he can handle, but their unstable mix of high spirits and inscrutability is discomfiting "male fantasy," and they freely criticize both Simon's politics and his sexual per- formance. These women are onto him. But they stay. But only for the time being. This paradise is really only temporary shelter, and much care is given to creature comforts: mealtime is at least as festive as bedtime. (It's appropriate that Simon is an architect. Shelter is his metier.)Simon does his damnedest to savor what he can when he can: the next dinner, the next drink, the next song on the radio. He has mixed suc- cess. "It's agreatcity" saysAnneswho, like her friends Bore and Veronica, is sampling New York's museums, stores-and singles bars. "It's a great argument for cities," Simon replies. Unlike the women, he's at a distance from his pleasures. New York is the proper stage set for Barthelme, who has always been both trou- bled and enchanted by a culture that is polyglot, polymath and out of control. Si- mon's radio serves up a musical ragout (Keith Jarrett to Christian rock); meals are a cross-cultural cacophony (haute cuisine to hot dogs). Barthelme, a self-conscious inheritor of the modernism of Joyce and Eliot, Picasso and Duchamp, has often fol- lowed them in devising or appropriating fragmented forms to fit this fragmented vision. He pasted his earlier stories togeth- er out of short vignettes and even framed literary objets trouves: "The Question Par- ty," for example, is a slightly altered ver- sion of a story published in Godey's Lady's n titling his new novel Paradise (Put- nam's. $16.95), Donald Barthelme calls some heavy-duty spirits from the vasty deeps of tradition. The invidious comparisons we're led to make with visions of singing spheres and angelic hier- archies-or even plain old milk and hon- ey-point up the main character's reduced expectations. His paradise is neither order- ly nor everlasting; his story, told in rueful retrospect, begins after it's already lost. Those who know Barthelme's work will be at home in "Paradise." The situation- Simon, an architect, has three beautiful young models living with him in a sub- leased New York apartment-is a toned- down mirror image of the one in his first novel, "Snow White" (1967), in which one woman lives with seven men. Simon him- self is a variant of Bishop, who appears in recent stories: a hyperintelligent middle- aged man who has a failed marriage, drinks too much and is miraculously toler- ated by young women after whom he lusts. Simon's guests provide all the sexual pleasure he can handle ("When they couldn't get a part of him they'd play with each other"), but their unstable mix of high spirits and inscrutability is discomfiting: they're like "splendid, stinging anthills." Their youth is irresistible-and makes Si- mon feel like a lost tourist in his own house- hold. "Who is Ally Sheedy?" he wonders when one wears a T shirt reading ALLY SHEEDY LIVES. "In what sense does she live, and why is the fact worthy of com- ment?" They are disconcertingly aware that their presence is the fulfillment of a A Modest Author Alchomizes 'Junk' L ike Simon, the protagonist in his new novel, Donald Barthelme lives with three beautiful women. The Barth- elme household, however, scarcely re- sembles the orgiastic digs of Si- mon and his three mistresses: the author dwells sedately with wife, Marion, a free- lance journalist, and daughters Anne, 20, a sophomore theater ma- jor at the University of Houston, and Kathar- ine, 41/2. Clearly, Si- mon does not mirror his creator. "I live a much quieter life," the writer smiles. At 55, Barthelme di- vides his time between