Out of the Book: Ian McEwen

The first Out of the Book event will take place Tuesday, June 19, at 7:00 pm at the Brattle Theatre. The event is sponsored by Powell's Books and the Grub Street Writers.

Powell's of Portland, Oregon - the top vacation destination for any true book fiend - is producing a series of documentaries about modern authors. The goal is to give authors the kind of exposure that other creative types get. Few authors have the household-name recognition of, say, Norman Mailer or Joan Didion. Powell's is turning these authors into personalities.

Ian McEwan will be the first author to get the Out of the Book short-film treatment. McEwan wrote one of Bostonist's faves, Atonement, along with Saturday and The Comfort of Strangers, which provided the script for the recent Pinterfest at the Harvard Film Archive. His new book, On Chesil Beach, will be released soon, and Out of the Book follows his story of a young man and woman agonizing over their first night together.

If theorist/psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek can become the go-to eccentric intellectual thanks to his movies, then it's entirely possible for Ian McEwan - or any of the other future Out of the Book subjects - to become hotshot literary rockstars.