Alan Bridges’s The Shooting Party (1980)

Alan Bridges’s The Shooting Party (1980)

Bridges’s hunt picnic is faithful to Isabel Colegate’s­ gently melancholy novel of English gentry circa 1913, The Shooting Party. The title The Shooting Party is intended to suggest the larger “shooting party” of the looming world war. Though they know it, Sir...

John Varley’s Picnic on the Nearside (1980)

Included in Varley’s “Picnic on the Nearside is a romantic picnic on the Moon. Fox Carnival Joule and Halo are pals. But their relationship is altered when Halo changes into a woman with full breasts, curves, “the works,” etc. To avoid the sexual...
Margaret Gordon’s Wilberforce Goes on a Picnic (1982)

Margaret Gordon’s Wilberforce Goes on a Picnic (1982)

Picnic is the euphemism for a daylong eating orgy in Gordon’s Wilberforce Goes on a Picnic (1982). It’s the story of obese bears and a goat, who collectively devour mounds of hamburgers on rolls, sandwiches, a jar of catsup, a bowl heaped with mashed...
Popeye’s Picnics (1981)

Popeye’s Picnics (1981)

Several Popeye stories include picnics –all with spinach. There is one picnic in which Olive Oyl tries to shift Popeye from his tried-and-true diet. It’s Edward Knapp’s What! No Spinach, and at this picnic, Olive offers Popeye baskets packed with salami, fresh rye...
Charles Sturridge’s Brideshead Revisited (1981)

Charles Sturridge’s Brideshead Revisited (1981)

Sturridge’s strawberry picnic in Brideshead Revisited is mainly faithful to Waugh’s novel. Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder’s idyllic picnic and intensely close friendship is a moment of respite in their otherwise often messy lives. Particularly Sebastian’s....
Claudia Roden’s Picnic(1981)

Claudia Roden’s Picnic(1981)

Roden’s Picnic appeared in England as Picnic (1981), then revised and retitled Everything Tastes Better Outdoors (1984). Her impetus is the belief that “There is something about fresh air and the liberating effect of nature which sharpens the appetite and...
Anne Burgess’s Picnic by a River 1982)

Anne Burgess’s Picnic by a River 1982)

Burgess’s Picnic by a River is The New Yorker’s August cover. By the side of a placid river, a mother, father, and son sit on a plate of cheese, a bowl of salad, a loaf of bread, fruits, and lemonade, Mother has a plate, and the son has a sandwich. Shoes off, they...
William Trevor’s “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (1982)

William Trevor’s “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (1982)

Transforming the popular children’s song “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” into a death picnic is Trevor’s metaphor for portraying the 1980s generation as infantile and short on morality. Six months into their marriage, Edwin, a twenty-nine-year-old...