There is no picnic in Hilton’s novel. Chips I (a quiet conventional school teacher) meets Katherine Bridges (a New Woman) while traipsing the English Lake District. “One day, climbing on Great Gable, he noticed a girl waving excitedly from a dangerous-looking ledge....
The label tells all.
Deim’s The Beach Picnic is a portrait of the Cannery Row crowd in Monterey, California. Among the picnickers are John Steinbeck, the kneeling figure lighting the fire, Ed Rickets (bearded) and reclining with a beer in hand, Deim playing the guitar, looks down at...
The Green Pastures imagines an eternal fish-fry-picnic in a Heaven inhabited only by African Americans. It’s a faithful adaptation of Ol’ Man Adam, Roark Bradford’s racist version of the Old Testament episodes told from a supposed African American...
Scarlett O’Hara’s first encounter with Rhett Butler is an April picnic at the Wilkes family’s Twelve Oaks plantation. It’s only days before the Civil War begins in Charleston, South Carolina (April 12, 1861), and the picnickers are oblivious to...
Riggs’s campfire picnic is atop Claremore Mound, a barren hill, 785 high that juts up from the flat landscape that was the scene of a battle between the Cherokees and the Osages. “At the right and forward, a fire burns. Three couples–boys and...
Thomas’s “The Orchards” is a nightmare. It’s a death-in-life story about Marlais, a blocked writer who meets spectral women, demon-lovers, at a horrible picnic. The narrative begins when Marlais contemplates suicide but instead is summoned by...
Leyel’s Picnic for Motorists is designed for an emerging market linking the joy of picnics with the pleasure of motoring. “There are many people with cars who make a regular habit of spending Saturday or Sunday in the country,” Leyel trills, “with a hamper of food,...
Bischoff’s Picnic on the River is a scene that alludes to a happy time. The picnic cloth is well-stocked with a wicker basket, and wine and food are surrounded by picnickers of all ages. The central character is the woman in yellow sitting beside the recumbent woman...
Gerasimov’s celebration of a very abundant harvest is propaganda. Soviet farms were not producing well, and the nation suffered chronic harvest shortages. Stalin’s propaganda program deemed otherwise, and the artists and writers were instructed to portray a land of...
