Charles Bukowski’s “Some Picnic ” (1979)

Charles Bukowski’s “Some Picnic ” (1979)

Charles Bukowski’s “Some Picnic” is mean-spirited –what a picnic ought not to be. I rank it among the most unpleasant and psychologically cruel. When Bukowski says he, his girlfriend Jane and his parents picnicked and “made a...
Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (1979)

Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (1979)

Schlöndorff does his best to remain faithful to Grass’s mordant picnic satire. Grass was pleased: “In Schlöndorff, I found a true interlocutor, someone who provoked me with his questions, who delved into the heart of the subject, and who, during our dialogue, forced...
Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge: A Spring Story (1980)

Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge: A Spring Story (1980)

Wilfred Toadflax’s surprise birthday is a picnic feast of cakes, pies, jellies, and fruits. It’s the kind of high-carb meal that makes your teeth hurt. Mr. Apple’s grace suggests that the food is local, but not as he suggests from “our green...
Robertson Davies’s “What Every Girl Should Know” (1978)

Robertson Davies’s “What Every Girl Should Know” (1978)

Davies’s picnic wit is a metaphor in is this advice about sexual mores to an assembly at his daughter’s school: “A girl who thinks love affairs are less trouble than a marriage is probably also the kind of girl who thinks that picnics are simpler than dinner parties....
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)

Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is inspired by Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Coppola adapted the action and characters to his conception of the “insane” war in Vietnam, and the beach party picnic is his addition to the narrative. Coppola ensures...
Tennessee Williams’s A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)

Tennessee Williams’s A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)

Williams’s A Clear Day for Creve Coeur (1979) is so anti-picnic that it ends the action before the picnic begins. The play’s title is a pun on the French creve coeur, which means heartbreak. In the middle or late 1930s, Creve Coeur was an active amusement...
William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice (1979)

William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice (1979)

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park is where Sophie Zawistowska is sometimes picnicked. Stingo, the narrator, associates Sophie’s park outings as one of Watteau and Fragonard a fête champêtres. He supposes that it was a “pleasant game” for Sophie to buy...
Isabel Colgate’s The Shooting Party (1980)

Isabel Colgate’s The Shooting Party (1980)

Colgate’s The Shooting Party is a snapshot of English gentry circa October 1913 when Sir Randolph and Minnie Nettleby, the lord and lady of the manor, host one of their traditional fall shooting parties. A halt accompanies it on the hunt or midday break for luncheon....