Rackham’s final project was a set of illustrations for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. He was suffering from rheumatism and dying of cancer. Yet, he completed a series of twelve scenes, two of which are of Ratty and Mole’s picnic on the...
Some of us forget that Enid Blyton is among the top ten best-selling fiction authors of all time. Many, however, remember the phrase “lashings of ginger beer,” associated with her picnics that seems to exist in her Famous Five novels. The Famous Five drink...
Momentary serenity and happiness are upended in Welty’s “Asphodel,” a humorous picnic story in which three old maids are frightened by the appearance of a naked man. Cora, Irene, and Phoebe plan a picnic at Asphodel, the former home of their recently...
The lovers’ picnic in Maugham’s in The Razor’s Edge fails. The lovers never touch or kiss or even hold hands. Isabel Bradley is young and socially mercenary. But, her lover Larry Darrell wants to “loaf” to find himself. Isabel confronts...
Moravia’s story’s “Back to the Sea” [Ritorno al mare] is about a picnic is without a shred of joy. It’s partly about gender relations and a metaphor for post-war Italy in the guise of a nightmare merénda, In the summer of 1945, Lorenzo,...
Slightly drunk, Sebastian Flyte looks up at the sky, remarking (mainly to himself), “Just the place to bury a crock of gold,” he says, “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then when I was old and ugly and miserable, I...
Gordon’s picnic is a snapshot of the Fayerlees and Meriwether’s Southern family reunion. It’s an August tradition for more than one hundred folks from all over the South and elsewhere. It’s not a happy day. As revealed by Sally Maury, who was...
Vian’s L’Écume des jours is variously translated as The Foam of Days, The Scum of Days, or Froth on the Daydream. Take your pick. It was filmed by Charles Belmont as Spray of Days (1968) and retold as an opera by Edison Denisov (1986). It was without a picnic until...
Winston Smith’s relationship with Julia (no last name) is among the most satisfying moments in Orwell’s 1984. It’s an interlude of romantic entanglement that begins a lustful relationship ending in pain and utter defeat. Leaving the dust of London for a safe place in...
Time and details in Beckett’s Malone Dies are contradictory and often obscure. Events of the narrative are confusing, especially as it reaches a bloody climax that ends when Malone hacks six to death at a picnic. The picnic is narrated by the protagonist Malone...
