Take Him to His Readers: Booksellers Trade Paper for Film to Put Author on Tour

As the film proceeds, it's soon clear that music will be a major element. Florence is a violinist and the leader of a string quartet. Edward favors rock and blues. This clash in taste reflects the relationship's more serious difficulties. "What she really doesn't like is the drums," McEwan says of Florence. "What's the point of having someone banging to keep time? Why don't they get a metronome?"

The filmmakers hired musicians to perform Mozart's Quintet in D Major, a favorite of Florence's, and commissioned an original blues song from guitarist and vocalist Chris Bergson, who shows up on the soundtrack shortly after McEwan's metronome remark.

What else does the film offer that you wouldn't get at an in-person reading?

Well, there are countless moody pictures of Chesil Beach itself, on the Dorset coast. And there are numerous commentators, among them McEwan's Doubleday editor, Nan Talese, who talks about being astounded at McEwan's insight into women's feelings. When she brought this up with him, Talese reports, "He was very sweet and said rather quietly: 'Oh, well, I've known a few women.' "

But for an author event to work without an author, both McEwan and Weich believe, it has to be about more than watching a movie.

"It's really what happens the moment the film is finished that matters the most," McEwan said at a recent publishing conference in New York, where he saw the finished Powell's product for the first time. It's "what readers then say to each other -- the idea of communities of readers responding to this."

So what does the small community in the Warehouse think?

The verdict seems to be mixed.

"Good stuff!" one man says promptly after the lights come up.

"The reader in me doesn't especially want to see this before I read the book," says Coll, who seems the most skeptical of the three novelists. And "at what point, I wonder, does it feel like an infomercial?"

It's two things at once, someone in the audience counters. Sure, it's marketing -- but you "probably got more insight" into McEwan from the film than you would seeing him read in person.

As for McEwan himself, he's a happy camper. After the New York screening, he pronounced the Powell's film "very lightly and carefully done," said he particularly liked the way music was incorporated and asked Weich for a copy of the blues song.

Besides, compared with what he described, with restrained horror, as "the three-week stab around the United States and the 25 media escorts" -- well, what's not to like about a virtual tour?