Appleseed Rectory is the site of Amis’s relentlessly unpleasant picnic that defiantly upends expectations. * The picnic is Quentin’s idea of fun for his guests, a free-wheeling and animated by alcohol and drugs. He says to his wife Celia, “I thought a picnic would amuse them.” But the actual picnic begins tanking as soon as the Appleseeders disregard a sign in a pasture reading “Fuck off/Trespassers Will /Be Prosecuted.”
Once settled, the women go bare-chested while the men remain (mostly) clothed. Instead of pleasant conversation, the Appleseeders limit their banter to discussing body parts, reports of unfulfilled sex, and inflicting personal insults.
One conversation occurs while a group member has a bout of cramps and wanders off to crap behind a bush. An uncaring friend approaches him, and readers are asked to listen in to their chatter
If that’s enough to make you queasy, the picnickers do gag on sandwiches that “were picked up between finger and thumb and held aloft like live worms before being quickly dispatched.” The lot of it includes beef steak sandwiches, sardines, liver sausage, anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, crispbread with smoked salmon, salad, Celery, radishes, cheese, apples, bananas, and biscuits. They make fun of bananas, and everyone gags in unison when boiled eggs are served.
When a curious black cow upsets the picnic, there is a chaotic scramble through the barbed wire fence that leaves them confused and scratched, especially the girls who “bled not very profusely from abrasions sustained on their shoulders and bare breast.” Safely behind the fence, Skip throws a brick at the heifer and yells, “Motherfuck, motherfuck.”
Though they are drunk, Keith says, “Let’s get drunk.” So, they dip into a teak cupboard where they have packed six bottles each of Pouilly Fuissé, St. Emilion, and Chateau Neuf de Pape, one Glenfiddich, one Gordon’s Gin, and one Napoleon Brandy. And twenty minutes later, after a bottle of wine apiece, there were self-congratulations about their recent escape. “We are all agreed that life is a rat’s ass. . .” someone wisely advises.
Appleseed is an allusion to Lindsay’s Appleyard College in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Both picnics are disasters (See discussions of Picnic at Hanging Rock in PicnicWit and Picnicsonfilm.org)
See Martin Amis. Dead Babies. New York: Vintage International, 1975.
Also, Picnicsonfilm.com is William Marsh’s Dead Babies, Mood Swingers (2001). Screenplay by William Marsh.