By Bob Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007
"This is an unusual author event for us," says the guy introducing novelist Ian McEwan to the couple dozen book lovers assembled at the Warehouse Theater -- and he's not kidding.
For the McEwan he's introducing is a virtual one. The celebrated British author of "Atonement" and "Saturday," who has just published a short novel called "On Chesil Beach," is nowhere near this funky venue on Seventh Street NW.
McEwan hasn't done a major tour for many years. The closest he's likely to get to reading in Washington this year will come courtesy of the experiment being presented at the Warehouse. It was dreamed up by the good folks at Powell's Books, the independent Portland, Ore., institution often called the best bookstore in the United States.
As with many bookstores, Powell's is heavily invested in author appearances to generate sales and -- even more important -- to build and maintain a community of readers. Yet many authors don't do full-fledged book tours, whether by choice or for lack of publisher support. And even if they did, they would hit only a tiny minority of communities.
So the idea arose: Why not make a high-grade film and build author events around that instead?
The lights go down, the credits roll, and heeeeere's Ian. He's mild-mannered, soft-spoken and as up close and personal as he could be without actually being there.
"They were young, educated and both virgins on this, their wedding night," McEwan reads. He has started with the first sentence of his latest novel. It introduces his major characters, Florence and Edward, who "lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible."
"On Chesil Beach" is set in 1962, its action occurring just before what the author -- in an interview included in the film -- calls the "breakdown of a whole range of social restrictions." But these changes hadn't happened yet, McEwan says, and it's as if Florence and Edward "stand on a kind of shore, a beach, a beachhead of change."
The film may be part of a beachhead of change in the way readers and authors connect. But if so, the group at the Warehouse isn't ready to storm it yet: They sit quietly, not reacting much, as the experiment proceeds.
Filming McEwan -- and eventually, it is hoped, a series of other authors -- was the brainstorm of Dave Weich, Powell's director of marketing and development. Weich recruited McEwan's American publisher, Doubleday, to help with costs. In April, he and director Douglas Biro flew to London and spent a day with the author. The filmmakers then spent a few more days interviewing editors, critics and writers about their subject and shooting the landscape in which his novel is set.
Over the next week, there will be 53 other American screenings of the film. Many will be in bookstores, but others, like this one -- which is being hosted by Olsson's Books and Records -- will be in offsite locations.
Olsson's has customized its event with three local novelists -- Keith Donohue, Thomas Mullen and Susan Coll -- who are to lead a discussion afterward, and with singer-songwriter Brendan Butler, who kicks off the evening with a short guitar-and-harmonica set.
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?
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