Hemingway’s “Scott Fitzgerald” in A Moveable Feast recounts their sudden friendship. Among his anecdotes is their picnic on a drive from Lyons to Paris in 1925. Hemingway was uneasy with Fitzgerald’s character peculiarities, especially his...
Exley’s semi-memoir Pages from a Cold Island, an homage to Edmund Wilson, describes his disastrous picnic on the Sugar River with Mary Polcar, Wilson’s “drinking, dinner, and movie companion,” and get her to talk about him. Exley’s...
Claiborne’s A Feast Made for Laughter (1982) relates the anecdote of the “Chefs’ Picnic” (1965) staged on Gardiners Island, East Hampton, NY, for twenty-five and catered by five four-star chefs. According to Claiborne, he was the star. His...
Piedmont, West Virginia, where Gates spent his youth, was a segregated town where most of the inhabitants worked at a Westvaco paper mill. Though Gates looks fondly at the company picnic scheduled to close in 1969 or 1970, the event is bittersweet. It’s...
“Hot Grills” is a chapter that puns on picnic cookery and adultery; unpacking the picnic basket is a metaphor for undressing; eating is a metaphor for sexual intercourse. Picnics are he release from everyday routine and the displeasures of a sour academic...
Laura Cunningham’s memoir A Place in the Country (2000) is suffused with romantic memories of a New York City park where she picnicked with her mother Rosie and eating lunch packed in a paper bag. The sandwiches were made with Wonder Bread, soft bread with no...
